Blind Repair

Nov 23, 2018 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Miscellaneous Fanfiction


“I still don’t see why you guys felt the need to put a pool here in the first place. This is literally a beach house.”

Zuko, Sokka, and Toph attempt to fix the swimming pool at the old Ember Island estate.

Author's Star Rating: 3.5 • Category: November Quick Fics • Contains: Fluff • Contains: Primarily conversation • Genre: Adventure • Genre: Drama • Length: 2k-3k words • POV: Limited • Release/completion year: 2018 • Setting: Canon

“I still don’t see why you guys felt the need to put a pool here in the first place.” Sokka rotated the blueprints ninety degrees and compared them at the new angle to the view in front of him with a critical squint. “This is literally a beach house.”

“That’s because you don’t understand rich people,” Toph provided, feeling her way slowly around the empty basin to get a good impression of the workings under the stone beneath her feet. She went from dry to drippingly sarcastic as she added, “Of course they’d need a swimming pool even though the ocean’s right out there. What if they want to swim in fresh water?”

“And ‘us guys’ didn’t put it here,” Zuko put in, perhaps attempting to evade the truth of Toph’s words. “This house is 75 years old.”

“Oh, so a generation into the war.” Sokka turned the plans again and scowled. “The Fire Nation sure sucked at blueprints back then.”

“I’m not responsible for either of those things,” said Zuko.

“I don’t know…” Toph suddenly fell into a soldierly rigidity, then transitioned stiffly to a firebending pose. No one imitated postures as well as Toph, because she wasn’t deceived as to the exact arrangement of body by clothing or gear. “You’re pretty naturally warlike.”

“Or unnaturally,” Sokka laughed, slapping his knee. “Toph, you’ve got that down! Do me next!”

Toph immediately went boneless, wobbling back in Sokka’s direction for a few steps before miming the throwing of a boomerang with a completely limp arm. At least she had the decency to do a catching movement next, though, implying a less than total lack of competence.

Zuko chuckled, then straightened his face back out again when he saw Sokka’s resultant outrage and heard his protest, “I do not do that!”

Having prompted the reaction she wanted, Toph doubled over laughing. “You asked for it!”

Emboldened, Zuko put in, “And sometimes you do kinda… flail…”

“You know,” Sokka huffed, “I was just about to say we know you’re doing your best to help end the war, but now? I don’t think you deserve it.” He buried his face in the blueprints again. “Let’s just figure out how this outdated pump system worked.”

“I don’t get why we want to.” Toph raised her arms, put her hands behind her head, and continued ambling along. She’d probably assessed everything beneath the surface by now and was merely confirming details. “Why not just have Katara waterbend the pool full?” She gestured vaguely toward the house, then resumed her casual pose.

“It won’t be a surprise if we ask her to help,” Zuko replied somewhat impatiently.

“Ooooh,” Toph hooted. “Prince Zuuuko wants to impress Kataaaaraaaa.”

“It’s for Aang and Suki too!” Zuko blustered.

“Ooooh,” Toph echoed herself. “Prince Zuko wants to impress Aang and Suki!”

“I do not!” Zuko replied even more loudly, blushing (though in response to which name was impossible to tell). “I just wanted… I thought it might be nice…”

“Chill out, hotman.” Toph’s tone was light but still mocking. “We all know you want to do things for the team because you feel guilty about everything you did before, but you should know by now you don’t need to.”

“I think it’s this way.” Sokka, who didn’t seem to be paying attention, said this uncertainty as he yet again rotated the plans he held. “Why did they have to make this plan square when the swimming pool is rectangular??”

Toph patted the ground with one foot. “Because the mechanisms underneath are laid out in a square, oh wise technician.”

“Aren’t there labels on the blueprint that indicate which side is up?” Zuko wondered.

“You’d think so,” grumbled Sokka, “but the instructions are all on this other sheet, and they just assume you know where everything is!”

“That seems like… really poor design.” Zuko scratched his head. “Sorry about that.”

“Not your fault. Like you said, 75 years old.”

Impatiently Toph suggested, “Why don’t we walk around the pool together, and I’ll tell you what I’m sensing down there, and you can match it up with your ancient diagram?”

“Good idea,” said Sokka, and they set off.

Zuko watched them make the circuit, undoubtedly aware he could contribute nothing and thus standing still. By the time they came back, Sokka was certain which direction was up, and beginning to think he knew where to go to get the whole thing working again.

He moved to a spot where the mossy flagstones were divided into smaller segments than in most other places, and started trying to pry one up. Zuko came to stand beside him, waiting to see what would be disclosed. But after nearly a minute and a half of groaning and straining and scraped fingers and really funny facial expressions on Sokka’s part, Zuko had to ask, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Hey, don’t ask me for help and then question my help!” the breathless Sokka protested. In some annoyance he added, in a different direction, “Earthbender! A little help?”

Toph gave a mocking laugh and shifted a toe. The stone panel swung upward.

Grumbling something unflattering about benders — though there must have been some other way to open the thing for those without the ability to manipulate earth — Sokka leaned over the cavity and began comparing its contents to his blueprints. “Yeah, these are the controls, all right,” he muttered.

Zuko peered in over his shoulder, eyeing the unfamiliar gears with a total lack of understanding. He sat back on his heels and looked around: first at the quiet house — checking to see if the other half of their party had heard them and might appear at any time — then, satisfied, at the empty pool. His eyes seemed to go out of focus for a moment.

“When I was a kid and we used to come here as a family,” he murmured, “how the pool worked was a big mystery to us. To me and Azula, I mean. It would be empty when we arrived, and the next morning it would be full. It seemed like magic to us back then. I wish that were the only thing my father never explained…”

Toph, standing at the edge, rubbed a foot contemplatively at the corner where it plunged down into what would be the deep end if they ever managed to fill the thing. “Yeah… We had a pool at home too. I was never allowed in it, because my parents were convinced being blind meant I couldn’t learn to swim. And it did, of course, since they wouldn’t let me try…”

Perhaps in response to the doleful mood that settled after these statements, Sokka put in a little awkwardly, “Well I have great parents. Or… had… in my mother’s case.” Then he evidently felt his companions’ none-too-appreciative eyes on the back of his neck, and added, “But, uh, the water’s literally almost freezing all the time where I come from, so… we never did much recreational swimming?”

Toph changed the subject. “The pipe is warped and has a crack in it about three yards that direction.” And she did that thing where she pointed directly where she meant without actually looking over.

“Can you fix it?” Sokka wondered.

“‘Can I fix it,'” she scoffed, cracking her knuckles and moving toward the spot.

“And then I’ll need you to help me with these gears!” he called after her.

As Toph started what seemed an unusually finicky earth- or metalbending process, Zuko gazed past Sokka’s shoulder again. With a deep breath he said quietly, “You know, I said it to Katara, but I never got a chance to tell you: I’m sorry about your mother. I’d bring her back for you if I could.”

Sokka turned to face him sharply, but his expression immediately softened. “Zuko, that wasn’t you. I mean, thanks, but… don’t feel guilty about it, all right?”

“It’s… not exactly guilt…” Zuko lowered his tone ever further. “It’s just that, if I’m ever going to be Fire Lord — and I’m not sure anymore that I am — I have to take responsibility for the Fire Nation’s deeds. My father’s deeds. It’s probably best if I start with my…”

“Friends?” Sokka supplied the word for him when Zuko trailed awkwardly off.

“Yeah.”

“Then… I accept… whatever that was. Apology? Was it an apology? Or more a sort of… official statement?” Sokka put a hand briefly on Zuko’s shoulder. “Anyway, it’s really big of you. The Fire Nation’s going to have a good ruler when this is all over.”

Zuko smiled faintly, seeming more relieved than flattered. “Thanks.”

“Ooooooh,” came Toph’s voice from nearby, “Zuko wants to impress Sokka!”

“Shut up, Toph,” said Sokka good-naturedly, “and help me with these gears.”

Zuko’s smile did not fade for a good minute while they worked.

Eventually, several crooked gears and a sort of lantern-thing and a few more pipe repairs later, the mechanic and the metalbender declared the business finished — or at least that they could give it a try and see if the aged pumping devices could still bring water up from the spring at Ember Island’s center and fill the pool so everyone could have a relaxing day of swimming without setting foot outside the anonymity of the royal family’s walls.

“Now we need you, Zuko, to heat the interior of the activation chamber to…” Sokka checked the instructions again. “230 susuros?” He looked at the written line askance. “What the heck is a susuro?”

“You’re not familiar with susuros?” Zuko wondered.

Toph agreed in the same skeptical tone, “Yeah, Sokka, you’re not familiar with susuros?” Then to Zuko in a loud whisper she asked, “What the heck is a susuro?”

“I know it’s an older unit of heat, but I didn’t think–” Zuko did a double take at Toph and scowled. “You too? But you’re a well educated Earth Kingdom girl!”

“Eh, I forget stuff that’s not important,” Toph shrugged.

At the same moment Sokka said, “Fine, fine, it’s some snooty elite Fire Nation term that only snooty elite firebenders will understand. Can you heat the thing to 230 of them?”

“No,” Zuko admitted, visibly uncomfortable. “I know what they are, but I have no sense for how hot that is.”

Again Toph doubled over laughing. Sokka seemed torn between a grin and a glare. “Well, according to these instructions, it has to be that hot to activate the pump process, but if it gets much hotter it’ll warp the disc and you’ll have to replace it. So can you make it kinda hot but not too hot?”

“How am I supposed to know how hot is too hot?” Zuko demanded.

“I don’t know! Use your firebending senses!”

Zuko threw his arms up. “I don’t have ‘firebending senses’ that tell me how to fill swimming pools!”

“This was all your idea in the first place, you know!”

“Yeah, and I asked you to help because I thought you could figure out this old–”

“Why,” Toph said loudly enough to override Zuko, “don’t you just heat it gradually until the pump starts working, and then stop?”

Both young men stared at her. “Yeah, that’s…” said Sokka.

“Or that, yeah,” Zuko agreed. “Where is the… active… disc… thing?”

Sokka hustled him to the correct spot and pointed. Zuko subsequently went through more of the breathing exercises he and Aang both tended to use before firebending than the other two expected, if their similar dubious expressions were any indication. With a frown at their obvious bemusement, Zuko murmured, “Stop shifting around back there. This is going to take some subtlety, so I have to prepare.”

Both Sokka and Toph nearly collapsed with giggles, and practically tripped over each other to get their comments out:

“Subtlety? You?”

“You’d better breathe for another couple of days, then!”

Fire sprang up to either side of them in mock warning, and perhaps the very safe distance it kept was prompted by the memory of a burned pair of feet once upon a time. Then Zuko turned his real attention to the job at hand.

For a long time nothing happened in response to the thin, concentrated stream of flame, and both Sokka and Toph had begun to shift again in a muttering sort of motion when the younger of them paused. Pensively she bit her lip, and slid one foot slowly in front of her every bit as if peering through deep shadows. Then she announced excitedly, “It’s working!”

Zuko pulled back, and he and Sokka dashed to the pool’s edge and peered eagerly down. And there was a distant rumbling and sloshing sound drawing nearer. There wasn’t, however, any actual water, and this state persisted for so long that both young men stood straight and looked at each other.

“What’s going on, Toph?” Sokka scratched the shaved area just above his ear.

“I’m not sure… It’s definitely pumping, and there’s water somewhere…” She tapped a foot impatiently, clearly annoyed not to be able to sense exactly what was happening beneath them. “The pipes may be broken farther out than I can feel…”

“The water probably has to come a pretty long way from the spring,” Zuko said doubtfully.

Sokka started some remark about flushing the system and how many leaves were probably collected down where they couldn’t see, when they all jumped, cringing, at the explosive sound of water gushing forth. Because the sound and the rush came not from the pool but from the house behind them. Zuko and Sokka whirled.

The rice-paper windows at this end of the building had all burst outward in an initial violent spray, which now settled into a calmer but no less prolific waterfall from every orifice. A full-blown river began to fill the courtyard, and raced toward them carrying various household items and — as Sokka had predicted — leaves in all states of decay.

“What diverted it inside?” Sokka squawked.

Toph was laughing at this unexpected outcome, but it sounded a little hysterical as water splashed over her feet.

Zuko cried in horror, “My house!” at least partially disproving the claim that he didn’t care about the place.

As the earthbender scrambled up a surprised Sokka for an enforced piggyback ride, there emerged from one window, along with the water, a bedraggled Suki, slipping on the sill, clad still in her nightclothes, coughing and irritated. A moment later Aang appeared in a similar state of dishabille but a far more cheerful mood. “The bathroom just went crazy!” he called as he slid neatly down one particular flume, curled up and spun blithely on his back in a small whirlpool, and finally jumped to his feet with a splash.

The water had found its way into the activation chamber, and at an abrupt hiss and jet of steam Sokka leaped backward, almost losing his balance as he forgot to compensate for Toph’s weight on his back. She demanded to know how far the water had risen, and with Zuko in the background trying to reassure her that it couldn’t get high enough to touch her as long as Sokka didn’t klutz up and Suki (in annoyance transforming to grudging amusement) wondering what was going on and the continued gurgling and gushing all around, no question or answer could be heard.

Then, miraculously the driest of any of them, Katara came barefoot-surfing out another window with raised arms, bringing with her all the remaining water from the house. No more replaced it, as the cooling of the activation chamber (and undoubtedly the warping of the mysterious disc) had probably halted the pumping process. Katara slid expertly to a halt in the midst of them, directing the sloshing contents of the courtyard effortlessly into the nearby receptacle. As she came to a gentle rest on the sodden moss of the flagstones and lowered her arms, everyone else seemed to ease into less tense poses and take stock.

Zuko gazed at the pool as the water in it gradually settled and bits of window, wooden dishes, miscellaneous articles of clothing, the blueprints and instructions for the pump mechanism, and a cushion or two bobbed to the surface or spun in calming eddies. He turned back to the others with a helpless expression and lifted his hands a little before dropping them again. “Anyone up for a swim?”

scifikimmi gave me a November Quick Fics 2018 prompt that said, “One of my fave dynamics between characters was Zuko and Sokka and also Toph in season 3. Could you write about them all having an awkward (but but not fight-y just funnily awkward) conversation? Maybe they are all forced work together for some reason without the rest of the crew?” I don’t know if I really captured their dynamic properly, but I think it’s a pretty fun story nonetheless. I’ve rated it


Displaced, of Unknown Provenance

Nov 17, 2018 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Original Fiction

Displaced, of Unknown Provenance

She’d begun to think this chimerical business might be less crucial than she’d felt it was for the last fifty years.

A woman that’s spent all her life in fruitless search is ready to give up the quest and her only remaining symbol of it.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: November Quick Fics | Contains: Gimmickry | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Length: 2k-3k words | POV: Miscellaneous | Rating: 1

Displaced, of Unknown Provenance

Dry leaves scrabbled their way across the car park in a chilly wind out of nowhere, reminding Marjorie of her own ambitions: sapped of vitality, newly aimless, soon to crumble away entirely.

They’d gone surprisingly easily, in fact, after a lifetime’s devotion to them, especially given how she’d ramped up her efforts in the last few years. She’d considered — perhaps only subconsciously — that, pushing 60 as she was, it was now or never… and that here in the 90’s, with information so much better stored and readily available, her chances were greater than they’d ever been.

But when everything she’d believed might be a lead had fallen through, and her constant absences to chase them had cost her a job she hadn’t much cared for but that paid the bills, she’d begun to think this chimerical business might be less crucial than she’d felt it was for the last fifty years.

She glanced down at her wrist, as she’d done reflexively maybe twice a waking hour nearly her entire adult life. Obscured though it was by the sleeve of her coat, she could picture what lay beneath so clearly it was as if her vision could penetrate the plum-colored wool. And she really didn’t mind. For decades the idea of giving up would have broken her heart, but now, after losing everything to this, she found it didn’t bother her to lose this as well.

Funny she hadn’t been able to take if off, though.

The wind picked up, and Marjorie tried to pull her coat tighter, around a body that had lost at least a stone recently as she’d gradually run out of money for food, without upsetting the holdall into which her remaining belongings had condensed when she’d officially moved out.

The signs of approaching winter seemed less the normal progression of seasons in nature’s long repeating song, and more ominous portents of days to come — a threat, almost, a warning that things would get worse before they got better. If they ever got better. You’ll only become more and more cold, they told her. More and more indifferent, like the world around you. Well, she was fine with that.

Marjorie had chosen this antique shop for her first try not because she’d heard it recommended, but because it stood so close to the flat she’d occupied until yesterday, and she’d passed it regularly on the way to the tube when she’d had somewhere to go regularly. Its old brick exterior, the somewhat tacky fake flowers in window boxes, its warm gold lighting through the warbly paned glass, the car park it shared with the bakery next door — it was all so familiar as to be almost comforting, to seem almost comradely in the overcast autumn dimness.

She nearly smiled when a cheerful bell announced her entrance as if greeting someone it was happy to see. She might as well consider a shop she’d never been into a friend, since she had no real ones. Anyone she’d ever sought closeness with, after all, had eventually drifted away from her driving obsession, and now even her more casual acquaintances from work weren’t likely to bother keeping up with her anymore. But a shop couldn’t drift away; it was always right where you looked for it. Then she really did smile — faintly — as a voice from across the room called out, “Good morning!”

“Good morning,” she replied, and moved farther inside.

In here she already felt at home. This building was full of objects just like her: old, displaced, of unknown provenance, sometimes worn, usually entirely mismatched. Appropriate surroundings for her indeed; she felt she could settle in among the Georgian furniture, the bric-a-brac, the china tea services and ivory tableware, stand still like a statue and let the dust cover her among all these other unwanted things, and that nobody would ever notice.

Ambling up and down uneven rows of miscellany with steps that seemed to have nowhere else to go though she had entered for a specific purpose, she came upon a wall covered in picture frames of various shapes, sizes, and levels of ornate bad taste. Some contained old paintings, some simple printed sheets giving their history (if available) and measurements, while one right in the middle held what looked like a Year 9 art project. Marjorie stepped closer to examine it.

“My granddaughter did that,” said the same voice that had greeted her not long before. Marjorie barely glanced over to see the woman about her age that had joined her in looking at the picture. “It’s dreadful, isn’t it?”

Now Marjorie definitely had to smile, because it was, rather. “How old is she?”

“Fourteen. She painted it for school and gave it to me as a gift. I use it as a demonstration in picture frames that are the right size, and she thinks that’s wonderful.”

“That’s kind of you.”

The painting showed a family gathering — it had probably been copied off a photo — containing, apparently, three generations, some with relatively human features but most of whom could most charitably be described as ‘abstract.’ Marjorie stared longest at what she believed was a toddler on the lap of one of the middle figures, reflecting that this generation didn’t even know how lucky it was not to be comprised of war orphans that would never be adopted unless they were handsome, gregarious, and not too traumatized by whatever they’d gone through before losing their families.

“Is there anything specific you were looking for?” the woman beside her asked.

Anything specific she was looking for. Hadn’t she just spent half a century looking for something specific? “No, thank you,” she replied — and why? “I’m only browsing.” She was here for a reason, not to browse; why not say so?

“All right,” was the woman’s friendly response. “Let me know if you have any questions.” And she headed back to her counter.

“Thank you,” Marjorie murmured, and turned again to the painting.

She found she didn’t really mind it. Yes, it made her think of her lonely childhood in a succession of orphans’ homes and curious psychiatrists’ dark-leather offices; yes, it was a reminder of the loving family she’d never had and never been able to locate so much as a clue toward finding; yes, it was like studying all over again the many, many old paintings and photos in various strangers’ collections searching for familiar features from the right era… but she simply didn’t care anymore. She’d given that all up, that weary and unsuccessful search, that long-running pursuit, that current of longing that had run beneath everything she thought, everything she was, for so many decades. She’d let everything go, and was on the brink of a new life. She was satisfied.

So why did she remain on this spot, staring at a fairly terrible painting in a frame she had no interest in, instead of going up to the counter and asking her real question?

Finally she forced herself to move. Somehow, though, even in motion again, she still couldn’t point herself in a direct line toward her goal. A glass display case full of jewelry, which by rights should have encouraged her since several pieces inside were of a style promisingly familiar, instead of prompting her to walk on with a greater spring in her step, rather caused her to dally pointlessly for several minutes wondering what their prices might be and just gazing down without much in the way of reflection at all.

But eventually she did reach the counter. The employee, who’d been reading a paperback on a tall stool behind the cash register, placed a bookmark and asked, “Did you find something you like?”

“I had a question for you, as it happens.” Marjorie was surprised to find her voice a little uncertain as she began, as if she weren’t perfectly at peace with this course of action. In a motion much the same, she shook her coat sleeve back, pushed her bracelet forward over her bony wrist, and laid her hand on the counter. “I’m wondering if you appraise and purchase jewelry. I’m looking to sell this.” She did not add that she needed to sell it if she was to find a place to stay tonight.

The woman’s breath caught audibly, and she reached out her own hands — warmer and plumper, but with the same prominent veins as Marjorie’s — one to steady the fingers pointed in her direction and the other to examine the bracelet. “Where did you get this?” she whispered.

It seemed an oddly significant moment, a moment in which the world of dusty objects around them grew even more silent as if holding in a great, anticipatory inhalation, and Marjorie found herself whispering in response for no reason she could recognize: “I’ve had it as long as I can remember.”

Delicately the woman twisted the upper half of the piece, which contained a Wedgewood cameo of Queen Victoria set in silver with blue and white stones in the chain around it, upside-down to reveal the one hopeful sign Marjorie had ever possessed that she might be able to track down someone, anyone of her bloodline: the initials MH inside a heart, tarnished from a lifetime of silver polish refusing to reach inside the tiny tight lines, etched into the back of the cameo.

“M.H.,” the woman said, and now her eyes were turned up toward Marjorie’s face rather than the bracelet she still held two fingers against like a blind reader against a line of braille.

“The orphanage named me ‘Marjorie Hughes’ because of it.” She finally returned the other’s gaze, and then she too caught her breath.

“It stands for Morris Hadleigh.” The woman’s hair, dyed a brown not quite natural to hide the grey, had those same wispy and probably uncontrollable spots over the ears. “He had it engraved on each of the four bracelets he’d inherited from his mother, since he had no sisters, and he gave one to his first wife and one to each of his daughters.” Her eyebrows were sparse at their ends disproportionately to their midsections, and she’d filled them out somewhat with pencil the same way Marjorie did hers. “He and one daughter were separated from his wife and the second daughter during the Blitz…”

Terrifying darkness, flashing light directly into her eyes, high wailing and screams and whining and crashes too loud to bear, confusion, loss… brown leather and deep brown wainscoting in one psychiatrist’s office after another… no one wanted to adopt so disturbed and inward-focused a child…

“They identified the mother’s body eventually…” The woman’s lips, telling the halting story, had the same wrinkles around them, the same deep creases down the outsides. “But her bracelet was destroyed in the attack.” Her nose had the same freckles, and — though it was hard to tell from this angle — the same slightly crooked left nostril. “And eventually a step-sister was born to a second wife, so she received the fourth bracelet.” Her eyes, with the same crinkles at their corners and veins in the lids, were a startlingly familiar shade of hazel as they stared in wonder at Marjorie. “But the third bracelet — and the second daughter — were never seen again.”

Something was building inside Marjorie: something huge and overwhelming threatening to break out when it reached the limits of what she could keep tamped down. Was it merely those suddenly wakened incomplete memories of horror and fear from her earliest childhood, eventually put in their proper place but never completely forgotten, that had been triggered by the unexpectedly spoken password ‘the Blitz?’ Or was it something else?

The woman released Marjorie’s hand and shook her own in an eye-catching movement. Tearing her gaze from the stranger’s face was like tearing herself open, but Marjorie looked, and saw the woman’s sleeve fall back to expose a mirror image of what had been the prized possession of her life, the one thing she’d vowed not to part with even in greatest need. “They never found my twin sister,” the woman finished shakily, turning her wrist so Queen Victoria’s matte white face and the shining facets of the blue and white jewels caught the light.

And Marjorie realized, as the hitherto-unknown something broke out in a violent sob like the tears that spontaneously poured down her trembling face, that she did care. The desire to find her family, to discover who she was and where she came from, had never left her or diminished one tiny bit — she’d merely buried it as deeply as she was capable, tried to tell herself it didn’t matter, in the hopes that she could move on to a new and less fixated era. And maybe giving it up, or believing she had, had been the sacrificed required of her to reach the goal she’d so long sought and had lately been so certain she no longer wanted.

The woman — her twin sister — gave an echoing sob and started clutching at her, trying to embrace her across the counter, marvelously unsuccessful and crying just as hard as Marjorie was. They drew back, each with a shaky wet laugh, and the woman jumped down from her stool and came racing around to meet her on the other side for a proper hug that was just as moist.

“Marjorie,” the woman said thickly into her shoulder. “Your name’s Marjorie?” And when her sister made a muffled sound of confirmation, she added, “Mine’s Gladys. Gladys Cross. Née Hadleigh.” And they pulled apart again, holding hands, staring at each other with baffled smiles and tearstained faces. “Where have you been living?”

“Just up the street for the last several years,” Marjorie admitted. “I’ve walked past your store every day. But before that I had a job in Swansea for long while.”

“I can hear it,” Gladys laughed in her much purer RP. “But to think you were in London for so long too — and right around the corner?” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head at the irony of it all. “Where are you living now?”

“Nowhere. I came in here hoping to make enough money for a B&B for tonight, and tomorrow it’s looking for a new job.”

Gladys stared at her with a slightly open mouth, and her eyes fell to the holdall Marjorie had set down beside the counter when she’d first made her way over here. “You’re really… you’re really without a home and without work just today? Just when you came in here and found me?”

Marjorie nodded. Prior to this meeting, she would have been embarrassed to admit it, but now… now it simply seemed right. As if she’d done exactly what she needed to in order to prepare for this without knowing it. As if the new life she’d hoped for had been specifically lined up for her, ready to start the instant the old one ended — only she hadn’t known what it was yet.

Her sister squeezed her hands and released them. “I’m going to close up. You’re coming home with me this instant to see your new room and meet your new family.” And as Gladys disappeared into the back and the lights began to go down from some rear switch before she returned with coat and handbag, Marjorie looked around the darkening shop again with blurry eyes. She recalled the welcoming feeling she’d had upon entering that had never diminished, the sense that she belonged here as a kindred spirit to everything that had no place, no ties, no history.

It seemed she’d been right about the sensation, but for entirely the wrong reasons.

For November Quick Fics 2018, my co-worker Danielle gave me the following prompt:

There was an old sad woman who was raised in an orphanage, and knew nothing about her family history. She spent her lonely life searching for anyone who may have had ties to her past, and longed for any sense belonging. She tried to be happy with her life, but always had an empty space that she hoped would eventually be filled with love. She possessed only one small token that represented her obscure past, a unique handcrafted silver bracelet with encrusted jewels and intricate details. The initials “**” were engraved on the inside of the bracelet, but the woman was clueless as to their meaning. She cherished this object more than anything else she owned, and it was her only comfort when she grieved for her lost family that she may never find. She eventually fell upon hard times: losing her job, failing health, and a recent break-up that only added to her ever-present feeling of abandonment. Eventually she succumbed to poverty and misery, and in desperation made the most difficult decision she ever made. She decided to sell her treasured bracelet in hopes that it would be worth enough money to buy food and possibly shelter for a little while. She took the bracelet to an antique shop to see if they could appraise the bracelet and maybe even find a buyer for her. When she came into the shop, an older woman greeted her with a friendly smile, and asked how she could assist her. The woman took out her bracelet, and the shopkeeper gasped. The shopkeeper’s eyes filled with tears as she asked, “Where did you get this?” Her hands trembled as she reached out to touch the bracelet. The woman replied, “Unfortunately I’m not sure… I’ve had it ever since I was young, ever since I can remember.” The shopkeeper rolled up her sleeves, and revealed an almost identical bracelet. The old woman’s heart fluttered, as she thought this shopkeeper may somehow be able to help her find her family. “Could you tell me any information about these bracelets and where they come from?” asked the old woman timidly. “These are the only 2 bracelets like this in the world. The were made by my father for myself and my sister. My mother and sister were tragically lost in one of our city’s bombings during the war. My mother’s body was eventually found, but we never found my sister…” The two women looked at eachother, realizing the remarkable similarities in their facial features, eyes, and even hair. “My father’s name was “**” explained the shopkeeper, and the old woman realized now what the initials in her bracelet represented. The women immediately knew that they were meant to be reunited, and embraced tightly for several minutes while they both sobbed tears of joy. After several hours of conversation, it was settled that the old woman would come home with the shopkeeper, and be integrated into the wonderful, loving family that she had waited for all this time.

It’s my first original NQF, so that’s cool. I’ve rated it

Her Own Words

Nov 15, 2018 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Miscellaneous Fanfiction

Her Own Words

These angry, fisted hands may never heal again.

Yaten’s lyrics reflect her internal struggles.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: November Quick Fics | Contains: Lyrics/Poetry | Contains: Pining | Contains: Psychological torment | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Length: 2k-3k words | POV: Miscellaneous | Rating: 1 | Release/completion year: 2018 | Setting: Canon

Her Own Words

With some surprise Seiya took the paper Yaten held out, and skimmed it. Yaten didn’t write lyrics often, so it always came as something of a surprise. She supposed she could have handed the sheet over more gracefully, too, than with nothing beyond the grumbled name of a currently popular song with a similar meter.

Seiya started to hum as she neared the bottom of the page, and Yaten, observing she’d caught the working melody, turned away and moved to the widow seat, where she drew her knees up to her chin and stared somewhat sullenly out the dark glass. In these male bodies, Seiya alone of the three of them had a soloist’s voice, which Yaten blatantly resented since she’d loved to sing back on Kinmoku. Now it was backup or embarrassment, and though Yaten often chose the latter, Seiya was really the only one that could do a dry run of a new lyric.

Taiki, who’d arrived in time to hear the name of the song Yaten had mentioned and then taken her customary place at the keyboard, now played a few introductory chords.

“Two notes lower,” Seiya requested.

Taiki frowned as she did a quick and somewhat difficult mental transition, played a few more chords to get the feel of the new key, and paused.

“And there’s a bridge I’m going to have to improvise,” Seiya added. “Maybe just drop out when I get there.”

Taiki nodded, fingers poised on the keys, and Seiya started the run-through.

Once this gentle heart of mine gave birth to so much love,
But with the ending of my world I had to lock it up,
Wrapped in starry scarlet like the glitter of your hair,
Surround myself in marble as I struggled not to care.
But can you blame me?
Can you blame me?

I feel it every time.

Of course they each had an image, a specific niche they filled in the band: Seiya the bad boy, the show-off; Taiki the scholar, the aloof and dignified; and Yaten the hard-hearted, the cold-hearted, the bitch. She knew she had a following, a specific set of fans of this persona that went starry-eyed every time she rudely refused to take a picture with the groupies or made some overly harsh comment in an interview.

And this song would be a calculated risk, representing as it did a shift in that persona, but Yaten thought it would pay out by solidifying that part of the fanbase without a lot of interaction with them on her part. She was pretty sure most of them already believed her to be so seemingly unfeeling because of some great tragedy in her past. They were right, of course, but their vapid imaginations went no farther than ‘loss of girlfriend…’ which was exactly what these lyrics would be taken as confirmation of, sending most of the hiding-his-broken-heart-Yaten contingent into paroxysms of pity and passionate love. And those that legitimately liked her because of her perceived unkindness were the type of people she didn’t want as her fans anyway.

Not that she wanted any fans.

And it’s not your fault for leaving,
But if you came back you’d fix everything.
Please return to me,
And return me to the me I used to be.

It had been different once. On Kinmoku or on the moon that had been her particular domain under Kakyuu’s rule, Yaten had been happy to share her music, when she had time, with everyone around her. She’d been pleased to have admirers that appreciated her talents. She never would have refused anyone a picture or made overly harsh comments back then. But that had been before every single one of them had died.

Here on Earth she looked out over a sea of humanity and tried to pretend she neither liked nor cared about them. It didn’t quite work — and every time one of them had a Star Seed taken, she literally ached — but she was able to present this frigid front to save herself, and part of that was denying her fans. Fans that might well be multiplied by this song when they realized it was only unbearable pain that had made her so cold. Oh, joy.

Though I’ve tried to block it out, I always feel their pain,
But these angry, fisted hands may never heal again.
Somewhere past my cruelty I’m longing to be kind,
But when everything is gone, what’s left to do but hide behind
The walls I’m building?
These walls I’m building…

I feel it every time.

When she did write lyrics, she tended to put her heart and soul into them; none of her songs were fictional as so many tended to be. As such, when performed or even recorded, they always included the psychic message the trio desperately hoped would bring Kakyuu back to them. Of course the band came up with a decent number of more mundane pieces — they had to fill up their concerts and albums somehow, and it took a lot out of them if every song sent the broadcast — and Yaten dutifully orchestrated them and played bass and sang harmony as needed… but, though she put plenty of artistic energy into them, those songs didn’t mean a thing to her. The trio had one mission, one goal, one purpose that swallowed up everything else; she couldn’t afford — and had no desire! — to get caught up in other nonsense.

And the rest of the band business? The signings and the sponsoring events and the advertising contracts and the interviews? That was even purer nonsense than the casual music required of them by circumstance. She considered it nothing very worthy of censure to give very little effort to that.

It wasn’t as if she needed anyone around here to respect her work ethic anyway. Though perhaps, deep down, in the part of her that lived in the past on a now-barren world, she might have liked them to.

And it’s not your fault I’m alone now,
But if you found me I know I’d know how
To say I’m sorry,
And return me to the me I used to be.

All this drama with the local Sailor Senshi had made her feel worse than ever. That Sailor Moon, like their own princess, had the power to restore phage to human form, to restore stolen Star Seeds, cut like a knife into the breast of one that had sensed so many of her own people disappear forever at the hands of Shadow Galactica. Of course Kakyuu would have saved them if she could, but, wounded and defeated, hadn’t been given that choice. That someone else out there had the power to prevent all that death and suffering, but hadn’t been present to do so, hurt so badly it was almost a catalyst to draw out all the emotions Yaten was so industriously repressing.

And that Sailor Moon clearly wanted to help, had been the one to insist in the first place they heal the phage instead of simply destroying them… that was so close to unbearable Yaten simply refused to think about it. Not only because it represented a missed opportunity, however remote the chances, but because healing…

No, she would never consent to join forces with Sailor Moon and her handmaidens. Never. Let them heal their own world, since they oh-so-fortunately still had the power to do so. Or fall to Galaxia, for all Yaten cared.

I feel it every time:
Every sorrow and hurt.
They reach out to me, and I turn away without a word.
Are you reaching out too?
I swear I feel you near.
I know the type of me you’d prefer…

Kakyuu was out there somewhere. And ‘out’ perhaps wasn’t even the right term; Yaten could absolutely sense her somewhere on this planet, somewhere in this country. The others couldn’t — at least not nearly so strongly — which was why Yaten herself had led them here, and at first she’d looked down on them for that. In her newly forged emotional withdrawal and harshness, she’d disdained her fellow soldiers for lacking her adeptness in one particular area.

But she was past that now. They had their own skills, as she’d known all along and had eventually come to accept even through the walls and the bitterness. It was impolitic in any case to demand more of them, or to blame them for working in their own ways alongside her when that work was more important than any individual’s strengths or weaknesses.

Would she ever see her princess again, though? Every time she thought about it, a dull ache she simply couldn’t push down throbbed through her. Where, exactly, was Kakyuu? What was she doing? Dying of her wounds, or biding her time? Working toward some goal, or just slowly healing?

And did she fail to respond to their desperate songs because she didn’t feel it safe to do so, or because she didn’t hear… or because they had changed so much she no longer wanted or needed them?

Yaten refused to think about it. Just finding her… that would be enough.

And it’s not your fault I’m broken,
But if I saw you I’d be whole again.
Please don’t forget me,
And return me to the me I used to be.

She didn’t like what she was. That was one truth of the song: she wished she could be other. In reality she didn’t think she could go back to her former self, because she couldn’t unsee the horrors she’d witnessed on Kinmoku and on her moon, and she couldn’t unfeel the pain of her princess’ flight to this unknown world. And it would take some doing even just to unwrap the layers of unkindness she’d used to hide from everyone she might have loved.

But if she could grow from the experience into a better, gentler, stronger version of her old self… couldn’t she better serve her princess that way? Perhaps someday she could even heal again… if only she could find her…

And until then, the walls. The marble. The near-complete insensitivity.

We’ll be together. I’ll find you.
I won’t stop searching past the stars and the moon,
Through the galaxy,
For my princess and the me I used to be.

That last chorus… Yaten wasn’t quite sure about it, and would probably cut it. Too many of their songs already used the word ‘princess,’ and eventually even the most thick-headed fan had to wonder why the Three Lights all seemed to be obsessed with someone they called by that name. The imagery of stars and moon was also repetitive of similar wordings in other pieces, and, though it was difficult to avoid, it did get old after a while.

Beyond that, the attitude seemed a little… optimistic. After all, perhaps, as Yaten had reflected before, Kakyuu didn’t want to be found. Perhaps she was on a mission of such importance she’d considered it expedient to shed everything that might hold her back, including her own soldiers. Or perhaps she didn’t even recognize them in their young men’s bodies.

Yaten stared down at her boy’s hands as Seiya finished singing. This was another thing she hated. The others often seemed fairly comfortable in their bodies, but Yaten never was. The only time she felt physically right was when she transformed. Just another thing to hate about herself and the contingencies of the mission they were on.

Seiya went over the bridge again, experimenting with a different melody without accompaniment. Then she tried one of the verses a little slower than before, making it sound even more soulful in her smooth voice. Yaten fought a prickle of tears behind her eyes as her own words, her own deepest thoughts and the pain that prompted them, poured out of her comrade’s mouth.

Finally Seiya ceased singing all together. Yaten’s gaze shifted to where she could see Seiya’s reflection in the window, and, observing her frowning slightly over the paper, Yaten frowned as well. And Seiya asked, “Don’t you think some of this is a little obscure for a boy band?”

“No more obscure than most of Taiki’s lyrics,” Yaten almost snapped back.

“That’s true,” Taiki admitted. Gently she added, “I think they’re excellent lyrics, Yaten.”

Seiya’s reflection nodded. “We’ll have to find a different melody, of course, but this’ll make a great song.”

Almost against her will, Yaten smiled faintly. Because she knew they’d suffered very much as she had, changed in their own ways as she had in hers. Because she knew that by ‘excellent lyrics’ and ‘great song’ they meant, “We understand every word; we’re with you in pain and in hope.”

Because where she’d previously had fellow servants of a higher authority from different moons, barely even acquaintances, she now had sisters — or perhaps brothers — with the same name, the same goals, the same trauma.

She swiveled in the window seat and stood. “Let’s practice something else,” she said airily, as if none of this mattered, and headed to pick up her own instrument.

And maybe she would keep that last chorus in after all.

An anonymous Guest gave me the following November Quick Fics 2018 thoughts:

I’m not sure if you would be interested, but I feel like the Starlights don’t really have enough fics about them? I’m particularly interested in Yaten and her apparent (psychic? emphatic?) abilities. None of the Solar Senshi were able to tell when a Star Seed was taken, yet she always did. How was she affected when her own planet was destroyed? I mean, could it be a reason for her to close herself off and become so resistant to getting attached again? I feel like one of the reasons she never lost faith in the Princess and knew she was somewhere out there was because she could sense that she was alive, but then seeing her die would have hit her twice as hard. It also seemed to me that while Taiki and Seiya could be a little harsh on each other, they were more tolerant of Yaten’s mood swings and when they did scold her (i.e. for throwing away fans’ letters) they were always gentle. Lastly, her name’s Healer but she doesn’t seem to have the ability to actually heal – or could that be that by cutting herself away from her emotions she also cut away her healing powers? (we do know some other characters have these.) I feel like there is much to explore here (not necessarily in the way I see it). Or maybe not, and I’m terribly wrong…

I think I hit most of the points. I’ve rated this story

A Legion of Hideous Minions

Nov 1, 2018 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Miscellaneous Fanfiction

The castle’s residents had been driven out. Thank goodness she didn’t yet have worse to suspect, since almost no blood and no signs of corpses had she seen.

Angela finds the castle overrun by unexpected enemies.

Author's Star Rating: 3 • Category: November Quick Fics • Contains: Misunderstanding/lack of communication • Contains: Other relationship(s) briefly implied • Genre: Adventure • Length: 2k-3k words • POV: Miscellaneous • Rating: 1 • Release/completion year: 2018 • Setting: Canon

Angela wouldn’t exactly call her ascent ‘panicked,’ since it was a more controlled haste and (she liked to think) a more controlled attitude than that, but she certainly clawed her way up the last few yards of the castle wall a little less carefully than usual.

It had been merely a leisurely sweep of the surrounding area upon awakening, a brief glide about this immediate part of a city she was only just getting to know, but it had at first startled and subsequently alarmed her. And now she finished her quick trip back home with a climb up over the crenelated walls to inform her clan that New York had gone completely mad.

Finding no one in sight in the courtyard where she landed and feeling a little too unnerved to shout, she made her way through the first door at hand and into a pleasant lounge that had probably once been a war room or something similar but that had been fitted up lately with more modern furnishings. Comfortable seats called sofas formed a square with open corners in the center, while a gleaming bar stood to one side, and the hangings that, now as a thousand years ago, worked to keep out the October drafts were machine-woven blankets from a Mexican street vendor rather than hand-crafted tapestries depicting battles long forgotten.

At first Angela believed herself alone in the room, and would have passed immediately onward looking for someone to tell about the chaos many storeys down… but as the heavy oak door closed behind her with an inevitable noise despite its well maintained hinges, a figure previously motionless at the bar whirled suddenly to face her. Angela took a step backward in shock, wings returning to a startled half-open position from where they’d been clasped around her shoulders.

He couldn’t be anything but a vampire, with that mottled skin as pale as death and those extra-long, protruding incisors startling even to one not remiss in the tooth department herself and from one of which dripped a viscous red substance. She hadn’t thought gargoyles capable of becoming vampires, but the stranger’s dolichocephalic face and the wings that sprang up behind him in as startled a movement as that of her own marked him as no human, even if the black and white suit and red cape he wore looked more like something designed by that race than the simpler garments gargoyles typically favored.

For one moment he stared at her, obviously surprised at her abrupt presence. Then his mouth opened into a smile, baring the expanse of the nearest overlong tooth and its gob of blood slowly sliding downward toward the direly pointed tip. When he spoke, it was in an accent she recognized from one of the ‘movies’ Broadway had recently taken her to — maybe the humans, ignorant though they were of so many things supernatural, had gotten at least that part correct.

“Ah, a beautiful gargoyle voman. Perhaps you vill be villing to donate your blood to my noble cause.”

Angela still didn’t panic, but at this point she was definitely a long step closer. Monsters rioting in the streets below, looting food from homes, and now one had found his way all the way up here to the castle above the clouds?

She considered her options. Vampires were said to be immensely strong, fast, and difficult to defeat. And though some gargoyle clans, in other areas of the world, reputedly hunted them — the night should stalk the night, after all — they were far from here and far from her range of experience. She didn’t know if she could take a gargoyle vampire one-on-one, especially unarmed as she was. Her eyes darted toward the opposite door, calculating her chances of escape. If she could just find some of the others, they could battle side-by-side and even the odds.

“You can run,” the vampire said, and for all the calm in his voice she thought him on the brink of laughter — at her relative weakness? “…but you can’t hide. I am Count Mordacula, lord of vampires, and my host of minions from the undervorld is loyal only to me! Your puny castle doesn’t stand a chance!”

Were the monsters ransacking the city his servants, then? Angela had to find the others, assess the situation and plan a counterattack, before the situation got any worse. Without answering the vampire lord — she wouldn’t be hypnotized by any spell of words! — she made what she hoped would be an unexpected dash for the exit. Feeling no gnash of sharp teeth or scrape of undead talons, she darted through the door and slammed it behind her, fumbling with the lock as if that would do any good. Then she raced down the corridor beyond.

What had once been the Great Hall and, she supposed, still was — though it had become more a museum dedicated to physical mementos of adventures past — seemed less defensible than other parts of the castle keep, having multiple entrances whose banded doors were more for show than anything these days, but it lay at the end of this hallway, so there she went. So fast did she tear inside, in fact, that she skidded to a halt on scraping claws, unfurling her wings again slightly to stop herself, as she entered the larger space and looked around.

This time she had no illusions about being alone, as the great figure before her would have been hard to miss. And lucky she considered herself that she hadn’t eaten anything yet tonight, for the abomination in front of her might have caused her to lose it if she had. She’d never seen anything like it — was it zombie or unholy construct or simply a walking nightmare? Its belly gaped open, showing rotting green intestines only held in place by what appeared to be metal bars grafted to the withering edges of the rent, and from behind its head stretched a third fleshy arm bearing a huge hook ready to impale an unwary enemy — assuming they hadn’t already passed out from sheer horror.

On catching sight of her, the creature opened its mouth, disclosing a mass of sticky brown as if its tongue had decayed into a stretchy mass, and let out a muffled groan as if trying to speak words long since lost to its cold, dead brain. Gagging, Angela took off running again so fast she left scores in the flagstones. She had to find the others. It seemed Count Mordacula hadn’t lied: he did command a legion of hideous minions, and — as long as she remained its only defender — the castle didn’t stand a chance. She needed her father’s strength, Hudson’s sword, and Elisa’s gun. She would even welcome some of Xanatos’ appalling mechanical suits right about now.

To the sound of the inarticulate monstrosity’s gurgling behind her, she made her way up a spiral staircase to the keep’s second floor and into a network of tighter hallways and chambers used as bedrooms by the various members of the small clan. The first with an unlocked door was the one Lexington used to tinker with his outlandish modern gadgets, and into this she ducked, hoping to find some sign of where everyone had gone. This time, though, panic was so close she could taste it, and she actually gave a little squeak at what the creaking hinges disclosed at their unfolding.

The place was overrun with spiders uniform in shape and size, that shape beyond unnerving and that size positively outlandish. She’d seen tarantulas; she’d seen funnel web spiders and camel spiders and a giant spider god, for goodness’ sake… but this many spiders the breadth of a small shield moving with clacking, whirring limbs in motions almost identical was enough to unnerve even the most seasoned world traveler. And that was before their dark master, hearing her cry, whirled toward her: three times the size of its brood, it moved more quickly and fluidly as well, and, seeing her, leaped forward with its many greenish legs, glowing webs criss-crossing between them, waving. Angela stumbled backward from the room, skin crawling, again slamming the door… but unfortunately, this one locked only from the inside.

Obviously in just the time she’d spend gliding around the neighborhood — an hour at most — the castle’s residents had been driven out. Thank goodness she didn’t yet have worse to suspect, since almost no blood and no signs of corpses had she seen. But who knew how many more of Count Mordacula’s minions had replaced her family? Though a skilled warrior and learning the ways of tactics and castle defense, Angela on her own was out of her depth and wrestling with fear. Best to get away from here as quickly as possible.

As she navigated the same smaller halls, now away from Lex’s spider-filled room, passing as quietly as she could Hudson’s partially open door from which an eerie glow and a menacing growl emanated, she thought fast. Where might the clan go at a time like this? Into the Xanatos building to seek aid from their uneasy allies? But the monsters she’d seen thus far didn’t seem capable of flight, and must have reached the castle somehow… how else but up through the building from the ground level? It seemed probable, therefore, that the building was also overrun.

Perhaps they’d gone over the side and all the way down underground to seek reinforcements among the Mutates? Not unlikely — and a practical regrouping option for Angela herself even if she didn’t find the others there. She hastened with steps as muffled as she could make them around the tight corners and outside.

On the battlement, she nearly ran smack into two figures that were surveying the courtyard below as if searching for something. The first, clearly a human or human-like magician of some sort in black robes, stood even taller than Angela if her wide-brimmed pointed hat counted for height, and turned to regard the gargoyle with a face as green as an apple. The other loomed over them both, hat notwithstanding: a great winged monkey, bulky and hairy and glowering of brow over deep-set eyes. It too turned immediately toward Angela as she emerged so close beside them on the stone terrace.

Succumbing for one brief moment to the panic that had been threatening all along, she leaped haphazardly to the wall, tore her way upward, and launched herself into space from the top before her wings were even fully unfurled.

***

Goliath lifted his monkey mask, which he wasn’t too sure about in the first place, the better to watch as his daughter scrambled unexpectedly up the great blocks and dove off the castle’s side after a single glance at him. At his side, Elisa likewise snatched off her obstructive witch’s hat, letting the hair she’d styled into a scraggly, unkempt imitation of is usual sleek shine shift slightly in the autumn breeze. Removing their eyes from the spot where Angela had disappeared, they shared a look involving the same grimace of sudden dismay. Before they could say anything, though, the door behind them opened again and Brooklyn, in complete makeup and evening wear, emerged from the keep.

“Hey, did you guys see Angela?” he wondered. “I tested my accent out on her, but she didn’t say anything, just ran off.”

Again before any answer could be made, Broadway appeared, and they all shifted along the battlement to make space for him; he seemed even bigger than usual with all the cosmetic putty and one wing done up like an extra arm. He was smacking his lips, and his voice still sounded gooey as he remarked, “Remind me never to put that much caramel in my mouth all at once ever again! I couldn’t say anything to Angela, and I think I grossed her out! Did she come out here?”

Lexington was the next to forestall an answer, creeping from the doorway on all fours due to difficulties walking upright in the extra-legs harness. He seemed to have caught the end of Broadway’s statement, for he put in regretfully, “I think I scared her with my remote-control spiders.” He brightened a touch, though, as he added, “At least I know they work!”

“But where is she?” Broadway wondered, now sounding a little concerned.

Both Goliath and Elisa looked again at the wall’s summit where the object of their conversation had disappeared. In some chagrin Elisa said, “I don’t think any of us told her about our costumes.”

Goliath shook his head, and his tone was even more regretful than his human mate’s. “I don’t think any of us told her about Halloween.”


This fic, which I’ve rated , is for iamkatsudone’s November Quick Fics 2018 prompt, “All the gargoyles and Elisa and halloween shenanigans?” It’s not quite all the gargoyles, but there are certainly Halloween shenanigans! (The WoW abomination costume is a total anachronism, though XD



An Unexpected He Could Deal With

Nov 9, 2017 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

“Because, seriously, Sano — the exact opposite of everything we are?”

Anarchist Katsu deals with the question of Sano dating a what, now?

Author's Star Rating: 3.5 • Category: November Quick Fics • Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes • Contains: Disapproval of the Saitou/Sano relationship • Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) • Contains: Fluff • Contains: Language (general) • Contains: Language (religious) • Contains: Primarily conversation • Contains: Queer Saitou • Contains: Queer Sano • Friendship: Katsu & Sano • Length: 2k-3k words • Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano • Rating: 2 • Release/completion year: 2017 • Setting: Alternate universe • Setting: AU - Modern U.S.

Sano was barely through the apartment door when he found himself practically knocked backward by the advent of a phone right in his face.

“What. Is this.” Katsu held his arm out at its full length and very straight, as if at its end lay something disgusting he wanted to keep as far from himself as possible… or a deadly weapon that required great steadiness and stiffness to aim.

It took Sano a moment to regain his balance, then another to focus on the small screen so immediately in front of him, but finally he managed to un-blur and properly parse the text. Then he said, “Oh.”

“Oh?” Katsu echoed.

“Uh, yeah. That happened.”

“‘Sano Sagara is… In a relationship with Hajime Saitou???'” Somehow his roommate managed to enunciate multiple question marks at the end of this statement quoted from his Facebook app.

“Yyyyyeah,” Sano admitted.

“And you were planning on telling your best friend about this when?” Katsu finally withdrew the long arm and allowed Sano far enough into the apartment to close the door, bringing his phone back around toward his own face that now bore an expression both angry and forsaken.

In all honesty, Sano had counted on Katsu’s inconsistent Facebook usage to keep him from seeing the announcement for a while — possibly forever — so he could work him up gradually to hearing about this development. He didn’t plan on all honesty in this conversation, however (unless Katsu got him really worked up, which was always a possibility).

Thankfully, he had a little more time to decide how to break the news, for Katsu was now busy scrolling with a growing scowl on his face. “Who even is this guy. He looks familiar, but I don’t remember where I’ve seen him before. And you’ve never mentioned him–” Katsu looked back up at Sano with accusatory eyes– “but now you’re ‘in a relationship.’ A formal ‘relationship.'”

Sano cleared his throat. “I guess it did happen kinda fast…” he said evasively.

“How fast.” Katsu seemed to have used up all his question marks on that earlier demand.

“I met him, like… less than two months ago?” Sano couldn’t recall the exact date. “At that fight outside the courthouse.”

“Don’t call it a ‘fight,’ Sano.” With disconcerting abruptness Katsu spoke with the wearily patient tone of remonstrance he used whenever Sano wasn’t demonstrating enough dedication to The Cause. “It was a riot, and with the amount of media coverage we got, I’d say it was– wait.” His expression, previously reminiscently calculating, suddenly snapped back into very present focus. “You knew everyone there already. Who could you possibly have… The only new people we ‘met’ were…” His eyes had widened just slightly with every word, and now they were very round indeed. “Sano…” he choked as light seemed to dawn. “Sano, please…”

“Please what?” Sano wondered uncomfortably, just as evasive as before.

“Please tell me you’re not dating a cop.”

Sano’s gaze dropped to the floor. He really hadn’t been ready for this conversation.

“OH MY GOD SANO.” Katsu fell back a step, tugging at his hair with both hands. “Why– how– what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking it’s none of your business.” He’d known Katsu’s reaction would annoy him, but wasn’t able to stave off the surliness even having seen it coming.

“It is my business! It’s bad enough my best friend has seen this guy I’ve never heard of enough lately to be ‘in a relationship’ with him… but on top of that, he’s a cop?!”

“Geez, Kats,” said Sano, stung, “does it really bug you more that he’s a cop than that I didn’t tell you?”

“Yes, because you only didn’t tell me because he is a cop.” Katsu could dismiss this concern, but not the other. “Because, seriously, Sano — the exact opposite of everything we are?”

“Most of ‘everything we are’ is unemployed, so, yeah, I guess he’s the opposite of that.” And there was some of that honesty in response to some of that getting worked up.

“I am not unemployed! I sell plenty of art! How do you think we pay rent?” Katsu’s righteous indignation shifted from defensive to betrayed in the middle of his retort. “Besides, I thought you wanted anarchy just as much as I do! How can you be dating the enemy like this?”

“Katsu, I don’t think anyone in the world wants anarchy as much as you do. And he’s not ‘the enemy;’ there is no ‘the enemy;’ he’s just a guy doing his job.”

“You’ve become one of them,” Katsu whispered.

“I was only really ever in it for the fighting and the cool t-shirts anyway,” Sano admitted.

“Like your shirt that says, ‘Fuck the police!?'” Katsu burst out.

“Well, maybe I just decided to take that literally.” Sano couldn’t help grinning as he said this, even if he was annoyed.

Katsu made a frustrated sound and, tugging at this hair again, spun away from Sano. The latter watched with some interest — still colored by irritation — as his roommate started making a peculiar sort of rounds about the room. He picked through the magazines on the coffee table, stacking most in the crook of his elbow; tucked all the coasters — most of them falling apart, since they were just the cheap cardboard kind, but all still visibly bearing the anarchy symbol — into his pocket; gathered up the three or four table-bound CD cases from local independent artists that still released to plastic in their attempts at bucking the system; and moved next to the shelves that held books and, farther down, DVD’s.

He’d been mumbling to himself the entire time, and now his words became slightly louder and more comprehensible. “This… and this… and everything by this guy… and this entire series… Most of this is going to have to go…”

“Katsu…” Sano watched in a mixture of amusement and frustration as Katsu piled more and more junk into his already overburdened arms. “What are you doing?”

“If we’re going to have a pig in here on a regular basis,” his friend replied haughtily, “some of this stuff is going to have to move into my bedroom.”

“You don’t have to do that, man.” Though he still found Katsu’s bustle somewhat entertaining, Sano was increasingly annoyed. “You really think I’d bring someone here who’d get you in trouble just for being an anarchist? That’s not a crime by itself, you know.”

Katsu only snorted.

“Besides, who says he’s going to be here in a regular basis?”

In exasperation Katsu pointed out, “You’re probably the most sexual person I know.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a bed.” Sano slept on an old mattress on the floor, and had no clue when he was likely to upgrade.

“That’s never stopped you before!”

“Except he does have a bed!”

“And if you happen to be in our neighborhood instead of his?”

Sano cleared his throat. “I don’t know if I really want him to see my bedroom.”

Katsu turned to face him, his stack even bigger than previously and his jaw low. “You… finally found someone… whose opinion of your bedroom you care about that much…” His voice rose into an unhappy, incredulous shout. “…and he’s a cop?!”

“Yeah, but my point is he’s not going to be around here all that much — and even if he was, he won’t care what your politics are like as long as you’re not actually breaking the law!”

Katsu snorted again and went back to collecting supposedly incriminating items. Sano sighed, having no idea what else to say.

The cumbersome load had risen above the level of Katsu’s mouth when he turned to face the south wall of the living room and gave a (consequently rather muffled) groan of despair. For against that wall, stacked several layers deep, stood his unsold paintings propped up and staring out over the room in all their bloody, symbolic, explosive, revolutionary glory. There really was nowhere else to store them — they took up half the space in here, and, besides, there were already more in both bedrooms and some of the kitchen cupboards — and there was no hiding the anti-government sentiment that had driven their creation. It was an immovable and undeniable monument to Katsu’s anarchism, and he groaned again as he stared at them.

“Katsu… It’s fine.” But for all Katsu seemed to hear him, Sano might as well not have spoken.

“I could throw a sheet over them…” This tone sounded more hopeful than either of Katsu’s groans, though the proposed solution wouldn’t help with the art on the walls (the pieces Katsu, for whatever reason, hadn’t wanted to sell).

In any case he didn’t get the chance to throw a sheet over anything, for at that moment there came a knock at the door. They both jumped, undoubtedly for different reasons, and then Katsu backed away suspiciously while Sano moved sheepishly forward.

“I thought you were just stepping in to grab your cell phone charger.” And there, badge and gun visible and everything, was Saitou, raising his eyebrows at Sano once the latter had admitted him and then looking around the room.

“Yeah, I, uh…” This was not how he had planned to introduce his boyfriend to his roommate, this was not how he had planned Saitou’s first impression of his home life, and this was not how he had planned this afternoon to go.

Katsu, at whom Sano had glanced involuntarily as if in silent explanation of what was taking him so long in here, gave him a scathing I told you so look before transferring the force of his glare over the top of his armful to the newly arrived police officer. Saitou barely looked at him, however; instead his attention seemed to be caught immediately by one of the hanging paintings, and he moved toward it unblinking.

Despite everything he’d said, Sano couldn’t help some nervousness as he watched his boyfriend approach this canvas his best friend had slaved over and liked so much he couldn’t bear to part with. Saitou could be very, not to say excessively harsh at times, and, though Sano truly believed he wouldn’t try to get Katsu into trouble over this, he might make some criticism that would be, in Katsu’s mind, just as bad.

But what he said, astonishing even Sano, was “I remember this one. The military force that has that family cornered looks even more oppressive in person.” He nodded sharply in clear approval. “But my favorite is still…” And he swung around abruptly, quickly scanning the other hanging artwork and then the front row of those stacked against the wall. “…this one, with the dark angel about to exact vengeance on the abusive cop.”

“I’da thought that one would be your least favorite,” Sano chuckled. This wasn’t going as he’d expected, but it was an unexpected he could deal with.

Saitou’s return smile was very grim, and he said in that intense tone that always sent shivers up and down Sano’s spine, “I won’t tolerate abuse of power. If we had an avenging angel on the force, my job would be easier.”

A set of thuds, variegated in sound (as it were), came from behind them, and they turned to find Katsu had completely unburdened himself with arms that seemed to have gone limp in their sockets. Books and magazines and CD’s and DVD’s slid haphazardly off the coffee table where he’d dropped them, but, eyes locked on Saitou and mouth slightly agape, Katsu didn’t seem to notice. “Are you… DireGold…?”

Saitou seemed to really look at Katsu for the first time. “I am. Are you Four Brushstrokes?”

Sano was, of course, still somewhat flabbergasted at finding his boyfriend familiar with the fruits of his roommate’s profession, but his shock couldn’t come anywhere close to Katsu’s. His jaw quivered, and the lips of his open mouth trembled, but no sound emerged, until finally Sano provided the affirmative Katsu was obviously incapable of giving.

Saitou nodded. “Interesting that you’d turn out to be Sano’s roommate. Your art is a much better use of your energy than the political movement it embodies, but at least in either case–” glancing at Sano with a quirk of lips– “you use your energy for something.”

“Hey!” Sano protested, almost drowning out the whisper Katsu managed at last:

“But… you’re a cop… and you’ve commented on so much of my stuff…”

If Saitou’s smirk was any indication, he hadn’t missed how wild a loop Katsu had been thrown for or just how upside-down he’d landed. But all he did was shrug and say, with almost pointed casualness, “I like what I like.” Then, as if to demonstrate, turning toward Sano with the same exaggerated unconcern (which was only making this worse for Katsu, which Saitou obviously recognized), he added, “Do you have your charger? Shall we go?”

Not sure what to think, or whether to laugh or tremble at this new development, or what to expect from the future, Sano hastened into his mattressroom to get what he’d come for. From the adjacent chamber he heard the ridiculously bland comment from his boyfriend, “I might even be interested in buying this one, if it’s for sale,” but all that came from his friend was a sort of choking gurgle. By the time he got back in there, Saitou had stepped to the door and was conspicuously not looking at Katsu again. When he saw Sano returning he said, “Nice to meet you,” in a deceptively polite tone, and stepped out.

As the door swung mostly shut, Sano demanded of his friend, “Are you OK?”

“Yes,” said Katsu hoarsely. “Yes. Don’t let me keep you from your date or whatever.” And, though the look on his face was still entirely poleaxed and the sound of his voice temporarily soulless, the words at least were calm and rational. Sano still hesitated a bit before walking away, but did eventually move to go. And before he made it entirely out of the apartment, he heard his roommate say to himself in a harsh mutter, “I’ve got to think about this…”


This was for leb’s November Quick Fics 2017 prompt, “modern au. extremem anarchist punk sano n katsu. katsu finds out his friend is dating acop n is disappointed. hilarity ensues?????” I don’t know that all that much hilarity actually found its way into this piece, but I still think it’s kinda cute.

I’ve rated this fic . For some further thoughts on it, see this Productivity Log.



Unboxing Party

Nov 5, 2017 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

Unboxing Party

Saitou might well have dismissed it if he hadn’t reached the conclusion that Sano was serious in this request.

Of gifts for Sano that may have cost Saitou more than just money.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: November Quick Fics | Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Queer Saitou | Contains: Queer Sano | Genre: Drama | Genre: Romance | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Saitou | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2017 | Setting: Canon

Unboxing Party

Though Saitou generally walked home from work, using the negligible distance between the station and his house as a cooldown period after the business of the day and to orient himself toward what waited at home, today he hired a carriage. The parcels that had been delivered earlier were too numerous and too unwieldy — individually and in combination — to carry conveniently on foot. He could have had them delivered to the house instead, but hadn’t wanted to spoil the surprise.

Of course, the more leisure he had to stare at the things undistracted by his usual evening walk, the more opportunity there was for doubts to return. He’d never really been sure of this plan; it had taken him months to concoct it, almost as long to decide he wasn’t crazy just for considering it, and another small eternity to act upon it, and he still couldn’t be sure he — its source of inception, initiation, funding, and presumably follow-through — believed it a good idea.

At this point there really did seem little to be done, however; the decision had been made along with the order. There were a few possibilities for backing out, but no pleasant ones, so Saitou might as well just proceed as he’d intended.

The cab driver would have helped him inside with his burdens — out of, Saitou believed, actual courtesy more than the desire for a bigger tip — but the officer, preferring to maintain the privacy of his home as much as possible, declined the offer. It was a bit of a hassle getting all the boxes inside, and Sano was footworking around him like an anticipatory monkey and making almost comparable noises of wild curiosity by the time they were all situated in the bedroom, but eventually Saitou did get the driver paid and dismissed and turned his attention to the evening’s real business.

Sano was crouched next to the largest of the boxes in a position that reminded Saitou of that assumed by children playing chicken-scratch games in the dirt, examining its neat cardboard edges and the foreign logo stamped on its top with great interest. As Saitou reentered the room he commented, “This is some fancy shit! What are these?”

“They’re for you,” Saitou replied. “Are your hands clean?”

Sano’s brows rose as he glanced again at all of the parcels, then down at his hands. These didn’t look too bad, but Saitou wasn’t taking any chances. “Go wash up,” he commanded. “This was all too expensive for you to ruin immediately with your lack of hygiene.”

“Hey, I had a bath just yesterday!” This protest was made only as Sano scrambled to his feet, however; it seemed he was too curious about the contents of the boxes to argue much. He went in haste to the basin and, after staring somewhat suspiciously into it — whether assessing the state of the water or silently resenting the need to wash his hands at all Saitou couldn’t be sure — plunged in halfway up his forearms and splashed around for a few moments. How effective this actually was for purposes of cleanliness Saitou also couldn’t be sure, but since Sano’s hands hadn’t been terrible in the first place, he accepted the young man’s presence next to the parcels again after not too long without complaint.

“All right!” Sano bounced up and down on his knees a little in excitement; he wasn’t used to receiving presents.

“Go ahead.” Saitou pushed the biggest of the boxes, the one Sano had been examining closest before, toward him.

Unnecessarily thoughtless and energetic though he sometimes was, Sano did have the capacity to act like a normal, rational person at times. If Saitou had feared he would damage the packages or their contents in the process of unboxing, his worries were allayed now as Sano undid the fastening strings and lifted the lid with unusual care. A layer of thin, crinkly paper protected the contents, and this too he folded aside with responsible fingers. Then he sat back for a long moment and simply stared.

Since entering the house, nothing had occurred to ease Saitou’s doubts. This had probably been a bad idea from the beginning, and, though he was fully committed to it now, it hadn’t really gotten any better. Except that then, as the full implications of the gift seemed to hit Sano all at once, he looked up at Saitou with a sudden smile and enthusiastic energy as bright and hot as a Tokyo summer, and all the officer’s issues with this decision were abruptly blown away.

On occasion — far oftener than he liked, in fact — Saitou was required to attend gatherings such as private music recitals, European wine-tastings, lectures with drinks and discussion afterward, dances (for god’s sake), and just general-purpose parties held by the rich and influential of Tokyo’s upper crust.

It had started with him grudgingly volunteering to represent the police force at certain official occasions to which they’d been invited to send a delegate — a task he only undertook because such get-togethers had the potential to provide him with useful information about the precise type of people it was his real job to investigate, and a chore he was fairly sure Uramura silently thanked him on a regular basis for accepting as that meant he didn’t have to do it — but eventually, usefully but to his chagrin, Lieutenant Investigator Fujita Gorou had begun to develop a certain reputation as a man that enjoyed a life somewhat above his own and would snap up any classy invitation that happened to come his way.

Loathing the entire business — this impression of himself, the condescending amusement with which many of these nouveau riche treated him as a result, and the necessity of attending these phenomenally dull and overly westernized events in the first place — Saitou accepted the invitations with squint-eyed gratitude and continued to gather incriminating or suggestive evidence from circumstances observable and gossip overhearable.

The first time Sano had appealed to Saitou to take him along to one of these parties, Saitou had dismissed it as a joke and thought no more of it. The second time, however, given how vehemently (for him) he’d just been complaining about the musical revue he’d been forced to attend and the offensive insipidity of the group that had gathered for drinks thereafter, he was shocked Sano would repeat such an entreaty, and in such a straightforward tone; so he was forced to take the request more seriously and wonder aloud why on earth his lover should think he wanted to join him in such a dreadful activity.

Sano had appeared a little embarrassed at the question, but answered readily enough. “Well, you know, I was born dirt-poor… My family lived pretty hand-to-mouth while I was growing up, and I never actually made all that much money in the fighting business… And now I live with you, and you make decent money, and I’m really comfortable here…”

“… freeloading…” Saitou interjected at a murmur.

“Yeah,” Sano allowed. “Yeah. The point is, I’ll never be that person — that guy who gets all dressed up in fancy clothes and goes to a party full of rich people and drinks expensive wine or whatever. I’ll never live that life.”

“And you’d like to see what it would be like to freeload at a higher level,” Saitou finished for him.

Sano’s grin was sheepish, but also perhaps a little wistful. “I just think it’d be cool to see what that’s like.”

“But you don’t need to be that person.” It was as close as Saitou could come to telling him, “I love you exactly as you are.”

Sano had seemed to understand, though; it was remarkable how often he understood the things Saitou couldn’t say. His smile had softened, and as he sat up and shifted over to press himself against the older man, he said, “And the life I do live is pretty damn satisfying anyway.” After which they were too distracted to discuss anything as boring as the previous topic any more that night.

The third time Sano had asked, it had been in a more belligerent tone than previously — “So when are you gonna take me to one of these parties already?” — and Saitou might well have dismissed it once again, as he had in the first instance, if he hadn’t heard Sano’s reasoning the last time this had come up and reached the conclusion that Sano was serious in this request. Odd as it seemed, especially when Saitou had made no secret of how much he hated the things, Sano legitimately wanted to attend one. One was probably all it would take to show him just what he wasn’t missing, but that one seemed to be important to him. And what was important to Sano was, sometimes very grudgingly, important to Saitou.

So now Sano opened box after box containing the various pieces of a fine (and expensive) suit of clothing provided by a French designer currently based in Yokohama: shirt and pants, tailcoat, waistcoat, white tie, gloves, a set of silk handkerchiefs with an embroidered ‘S’ in one corner for versatility, shoes, and an utterly ridiculous piece of headwear called a ‘top hat,’ all of which would fit in impeccably at one of these hyper-European gatherings he was so interested in suffering through.

“I don’t believe this,” he was commenting in supreme glee as he smoothed out the dark grey vest with a huge grin on his face. “Is all this gonna fit me?”

“It fits me,” Saitou replied with half a shrug. They’d long since determined their bodies to be similar enough in shape and size that they could easily wear each other’s clothing — though how this would apply to European garb remained to be seen.

Sano looked up at him with an enchanted smile. “You went and got fitted for all this?”

“I thought it might be useful to have a western evening suit around.” Saitou didn’t bother getting into details of just how uncomfortable it had been dealing with the French couturier. “You can wear it to the party tonight, and then I’ll have it if I need it in the future.” And he also didn’t mention that, although this was perfectly true, he would never even have begun to consider purchasing such a thing if he hadn’t wanted it specifically for Sano.

“Oh, so it’s not really ‘for me.'” Sano didn’t seem at all put off by this information, and continued to grin over their object of discussion with great delight. “It’s really just a loan.”

“That’s right. Now let’s get you into it.”

Sano jumped up with alacrity and began shedding his clothing almost as quickly as he was wont to do under much different circumstances in this room. As he did so he asked, “What are you wearing?”

“My police uniform, as always.” Fujita-kun’s reputation, after all, involved a touch of stuffed-shirtedness.

“All right.” Sano held up the trousers he’d pulled fully from their box. “But I wanna see you in this sometime too.”

Saitou smirked, and they got to work.

At the shop in Yokohama, one aspect of the fitting had been a careful training session on how to wear all these articles. Saitou had wanted to be absolutely certain he could get the things onto Sano and start his festive evening out properly, and just looking at some of them there had been some initial confusion. After that there had been some… well, not embarrassment, exactly, but certainly an enhancement of his discomfort as the French designer and his assistant had obviously discerned without needing to be told that Saitou was ordering these clothes for someone else… and what his relationship with that someone must be. Since the aforementioned two gentlemen seemed to have the same relationship, this had evidently raised him in their opinion… but it had also raised the familiarity with which they treated him, and, given he was half naked much of that time, that had only made things all the more awkward for Saitou.

Sano would never know what his wolf had gone through for his sake, however, since Saitou didn’t plan to mention it. And Sano was certainly in nothing but a good mood now as, with a fair amount of assistance, he donned the pieces in the correct order and manner and made himself into an imitation of a French gentleman of the latest mode. Once his hair was combed out of its chaos and into smoothed-back, shining locks, he was ready for the top hat and a thorough examination from all angles.

“Well?” he wondered when Saitou had prowled all around him twice, eyeing him from head to toe.

Saitou did not immediately reply. Sano looked… well, he looked absurdly handsome and desirable… but also… alien. This ensemble that not only partook of a completely different culture but represented, to Saitou, much of what he disliked about modern times… it suited Sano on one level, the most superficial, but not in any more profound way. Saitou would like nothing better, for more than one reason, than to strip it all off of him again.

At the same time, though, Sano’s delight at his finery and the prospect of attending a party in it was almost luminous. Saitou still didn’t quite understand this desire, but his own confusion, the awkwardness and discomfort he’d gone through, the amount of money he’d laid out to get to this point — even the sight of the person he cared about most wearing, essentially, the uniform of many of his enemies — seemed entirely worthwhile to witness such purity of joy and anticipation in his lover’s face and bearing.

“Very French,” he said at last.

Even Sano’s snort in response sounded happy. “Well, when does the party start?”

“We need to get going. We’re going to be fashionably late as it is.”

Sano’s eyes widened. “‘Fashionably late?’ Is that a thing??”

“Damn,” Saitou muttered, and led the way out of the room.

The rest of the night was certainly going to be interesting. Saitou would introduce Sano to his host simply by name without appending further information, and leave him to his own devices. Then Sano would wander around the place with his thug’s saunter intruding on private conversations; demonstrate that he spoke neither French, English, nor German — nor even particularly good Japanese — in his loud, uncultured accent; eat all the food, possibly commenting uninformedly on its origin and composition, and drink far too much; start arguments and maybe even pick fights; and thoroughly and unabashedly enjoy every last brutish, ignorant second of it. He was going to ruin this party, and Saitou looked forward to it almost as much as he did.

This story, which I’ve rated , was for HakuSaitoSan’s November Quick Fics 2017 prompt “Saito giving in to some unusual want of Sano’s.” For some author’s notes from not long after I wrote it, see this Productivity Log.

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).

Prison of Their Own Making

Nov 4, 2017 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Miscellaneous Fanfiction

Prison of Their Own Making

“Does that bloke out there know who we are?” Daniel wondered.

Tom Felton organizes a silly little reunion, and it gets sillier.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: Miscellaneous one-shots | Category: November Quick Fics | Contains: Pointlessness | Contains: Supernatural occurrences | Genre: Humor | Length: 2k-3k words | POV: Miscellaneous | Rating: 1 | Release/completion year: 2017 | Setting: Canon

Prison of Their Own Making

When Tom stepped from his car into the parking lot to meet his friends, he was a little dismayed if not particularly surprised to find a grand total of two people waiting for him — only Daniel and Emma, the ones he saw most routinely anyway — at the specified time.

After hugs and handclasps of greeting, Emma looked around curiously and commented, “I thought you invited everyone.”

Tom shrugged. “I guess everyone’s busy.”

“I’m very busy,” Emma replied in a mock huffy tone, “and I’m here.”

With a laugh Tom put a comradely arm around her shoulders and hugged her again. “It’s really good to see you guys.”

Daniel too was scanning the area. “It is,” he agreed, shrugging slightly as he turned back without having found a trace of any of their other friends. “So what are we doing, exactly?”

Tom frowned across the lot at their destination, then threw one last, futile glance at the empty parking spaces nearby. “Well, I’d like to wait and see if anyone else shows up, but we’re scheduled for 4:00, so we’d better go inside.”

“That doesn’t actually answer the question, though,” Emma pointed out as they crossed toward the tinted glass doors awaiting them.

Tom grinned. “You’ll see inside.” The others rolled their eyes at this pointed but pointless mystery, but didn’t hesitate to accompany him.

They did see inside, and the continued rolling of eyes and a certain amount of gaping once they were there prevented any further comments from Daniel or Emma as Tom got them checked in. “Felton?” the attendant was saying, flipping through pages on a clipboard. “Yeah, we’ve got you down for four, but I thought you were going to have a lot more people with you?”

“Seems like all our other friends are gits who can’t show up on time to a reunion get-together,” Tom explained. “I thought we’d get started, and if anyone else arrives you can let them in, all right?”

Although this arrangement didn’t entirely seem to suit the attendant, he nevertheless agreed; Tom had paid him a decent amount of money. After some picky business with waivers the man didn’t even look at once they were all filled out, he ushered them down a narrow hallway to where a set of lockers stood across from a dark door. Once he’d allowed Emma to stow her purse in the former, he drew their attention to the latter and began giving instructions. These dragged on for what seemed an unnecessary length of time, perhaps because the only one of the three to respond and confirm he was actually paying attention was Tom; the others maintained a dubious silence. But finally the man finished his dissertation, handed each of them a large round button with a pin on the back for attaching to one’s clothing, and stepped past them to open the door and allow them to enter.

Inside what proved to be a cramped but high-ceiling’d entry or antechamber, the moment the way behind them was closed, Daniel and Emma rounded immediately on Tom with expressions of skeptical amusement and demanded almost in unison, “A Harry-Potter-themed escape room?”

Tom’s grin was part sheepishness and part cheek. “When I saw they had one, I couldn’t resist.”

“Of all the silly things to drag me away from everything I was busy with…” Emma was rolling her eyes again, but she laughed as she said it.

“Does that bloke out there know who we are?” Daniel wondered at about the same moment.

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. You’d think he would, but it’s been so long…”

“Well…” Emma turned away from them to examine the tiny room. “We only have an hour, right? Since we’re here, we might as well get going on it.”

The nature of the first puzzle was immediately apparent. A big wooden door with an old-fashioned wrought-iron handle and lock blocked their path, the keyhole gaping at them like a taunting mouth. And above them, too far up to be reached even with a skillful vertical spring, myriad winged keys dangled on strings from the distant ceiling. A fan seemed to be running up there, for the keys spun and jostled and clinked together in not too bad an imitation of the scene from the film.

Finished peering into the jingling dimness, Daniel dropped his eyes to the more accessible parts of the room again. “There’s no broom…”

“And this is reality,” Emma reminded him. “How were you expecting to fly up there?”

Now it was Daniel’s turn to look a little sheepish. “I thought if I could find a broom and sit on it, the right key might fall down.”

“It’s sure to fall down if we do something,” Tom mused.

At that moment the door behind them opened once again, and they were joined by Rupert, who came bounding into the small space and immediately clapped Tom on the back. “All right, guys? Tom, you’re a genius! I would have never guessed this was your idea! How did you find this place?”

“Online, of course,” Tom told him, returning the slap on the back.

Daniel winced even as he moved to take his turn greeting Rupert. “You look at Harry Potter stuff online?”

“So what are we doing here?” Rupert wondered before Tom could answer the somewhat loaded question.

“Trying to get the right key to come down to open this door,” Emma explained as she hugged him in her turn. “And before you ask, there’s no broom.”

“Well, and this is reality anyway,” Rupert allowed.

“It was the natural first thing to look for!” protested Daniel.

“But there is a wand over there.” Everyone followed Rupert’s pointing finger, wondering how he’d noticed when he’d been in the room a fraction of the time they had.

Emma moved to snatch the prop from the little wall-mounted shelf where it lay beside a vase of fake flowers. Examining it, she said, “This is one of those official replicas. I think it’s Draco’s.”

“Let me see,” said the admitted Draco expert. And when he too had studied it for a moment he confirmed, “Yeah, this one’s mine. But I don’t remember the fetching-things spell.”

“Accio,” Daniel supplied with a grin. “I should really know.”

Tom thanked him and pointed the wand upward. “Accio key!”

Emma’s amused reminiscent murmur of “Swish and flick!” was drowned out by the sound of the shelf from which they’d retrieved the wand crashing from its supports down against the wall and the vase that had previously rested upon it — apparently made of nothing more delicate than plastic — falling to the floor.

“Oh, crap, we broke the escape room,” Tom muttered as he lowered his wand. He looked guiltily toward the door, expecting the attendant to enter at any moment and demand what they were playing at not five minutes into this challenge.

“No, I think that was supposed to happen.” Daniel bent thoughtfully to pick up the fallen vase and gather its silk flowers. “That was sort of like what happened when I — when Harry tried to use a wand that wasn’t right for him. Remember?”

“That’s right!” Rupert pointed at Daniel enthusiastically as he agreed with the theory. “We have to find a different wand!” And he began poking into the room’s darker corners.

As they all searched, the main door opened again and admitted Evanna into what was by now a very crowded space indeed. Hugs were getting difficult, but they managed them, and then the newcomer wondered what they were all looking for. Once Tom explained, she shook her head with a smile.

“But it won’t be a different wand. It’ll be the same wand, only somebody else has to use it.”

Their foolish looks at each other indicated their concurrence with this idea they wished they’d thought of sooner.

“We could all try it,” Daniel suggested reluctantly, glancing around. “There’s not much else to destroy in here if we get it wrong.”

But Emma said suddenly, “No, I get it! It’s Draco’s wand, so it can only be used by whichever of us got assigned Slytherin — that’s you, Dan.”

They all looked down at the buttons they wore. Tom had fastened his on without really paying attention — the attendant had still been talking at that point, and all he’d said about these accoutrements was that they would provide valuable clues — but now as he handed the wand over to Daniel he remarked, “I always did rather fancy Hufflepuff.”

This time when Daniel pointed the wand upward and confidently said, “Accio key!” nothing in the room around them fell apart… but if there was a more positive effect, they all missed it, for just as he spoke, the entrance opened again and Bonnie came in.

There was now barely room to move in here, and as everyone shuffled awkwardly around trying to greet their friend, it wasn’t even clear who muttered, “We really need to get this door open.”

“And what are we doing to get the door open?” Bonnie asked. With a glance at the dangling keys that evidently apprised her of the situation, she added, “I guess we can’t fly up there with a broom in real life.”

It was clear who snorted at this.

“We were trying to summon it,” Rupert explained.

“That… usually doesn’t work in real life either,” Bonnie pointed out with laughter in her tone.

Daniel just raised the wand again, nearly taking Evanna’s eye out as he did so. “Accio key!”

Nothing happened.

“Try pronouncing it ‘ax-ee-oh,'” Tom suggested. It was getting pretty hot in here, and he hoped uneasily that everyone was wearing antiperspirant.

And when the altered pronunciation too produced no results, Emma wondered, “Are we sure this is right?”

Evanna said, “I think you need to be more specific with the spell.”

Bonnie agreed. “Yeah, you have to say which key you want.”

“I can’t see any of them clearly, though,” Daniel complained, gently head-bashing Rupert as he craned his neck to look upward. “What should I say?”

“Which key was it in the film?” someone asked.

“I wasn’t even in the studio when you guys filmed that scene.” Tom started to shrug, then, finding his two arms pressed up against Emma’s back and Rupert’s side, respectively, thought better of it.

“I wasn’t even in the franchise when you guys filmed that scene,” Evanna put in.

“But there was a line about it,” Emma insisted. She added at a mutter, trying to remember, “What was it?”

“I’ve done a lot of other films since then,” Daniel said helplessly.

“I’ve been driving an ice cream truck.” This was apparently all Rupert had to offer.

Tom advised, “Just try everything you can think of.”

“Accio correct key!” Daniel jabbed the wand toward the ceiling again. “Accio the key we need!”

“Try colors,” someone suggested.

“Accio black key! Accio brown key! Accio silver key! Accio rainbow key!”

“That’s a lot of keys!” came another voice from the newly opened door — the statement and a slight, very refreshing breeze from the orifice were the first indications of James’s presence.

“Yeah, do we really need all of those keys?” Oliver wedged himself in beside his brother, cheerfully eliminating the very last of the available space. “Or would just the rainbow one do?” And as the entry closed behind the twins, verbal pandemonium broke out.

Far above the reunited group now packed like sardines into the little escape room antechamber, unseen but not unseeing, seated on the fluffiest of clouds overlooking the bustling Earth, two winged men shared a bowl of celestial peanuts. These came up honey-roasted for one, lightly salted for the other, as each preferred, and now the elder of the two — though it was difficult to distinguish ages in this context — plucked one nut from the container and flicked it down toward the subject of their entertainment. It faded away into nothingness as it fell, unlike his chuckling lament, “They’ve wasted twenty minutes on just the first puzzle!”

“‘We’re looking for a big old-fashioned one,'” the younger man quoted. “‘Probably rusty like the handle.’ ‘The one with the broken wing.'” And he shook his head with a wry smile.

“Now, Alan, you have to remember that they don’t have nearly as much freedom as we do to marathon all eight films whenever they please.”

“You still think they can make it?”

“They always worked together well in the studio.”

“I think you’re going to end up owing me twenty wingfeathers, Richard.” Alan rattled his own angelic appendages in satisfaction.

“Bets aren’t binding in Heaven,” Richard replied piously.

“Which is why we came down here to watch,” said Alan with a grin. “Look, he’s trying the spell again.”

And with another handful of peanuts apiece, the two divine messengers returned their attention to the scene below and their friends’ sporting attempt at finding a way out of a dark, crowded, sweaty, and ridiculously appropriate prison of their own making.

This was for my very own mother’s November Quick Fics 2017 prompt, “The child actors that play the HPworld characters do a HP escape room. Although maybe as adults.” I was not expecting any RPF prompts for this, least of all from my mom XD Hopefully nobody that reads this piece knows how any of these people actually act or talk, since I purely made it all up. Also, at the time it may have been Too Soon re: Alan Rickman, but there it is.

I’ve rated this story . For some author’s notes, see this Productivity Log.

It’s Curtains For You

Nov 3, 2017 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

It’s Curtains For You

He would probably get used to the stupid things eventually.

Regarding the amenities in Saitou’s office.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: November Quick Fics | Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Fluff | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Queer Saitou | Contains: Queer Sano | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Romance | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Saitou | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2017 | Setting: Canon

It’s Curtains For You

Indifferent as he was to most westernization, Saitou had a distinct opinion on the new curtains. They were part of a continual project intended to ‘increase the comfort and convenience and augment the dignity of the much-respected Tokyo police force,’ a project that had strangers in and out of his office on a regular basis taking measurements and assessing colors. The result was gaudy and provokingly red, didn’t necessarily match the fresh wallpaper as well as they believed it did, not to mention something that would require dusting or laundering or airing or whatever you did with long curtains — which meant further invasion of his privacy on a regular basis with no foreseeable end.

And it wasn’t as if the window needed any covering… This second-floor chamber wasn’t susceptible to invasion through that route — not that the curtains would do much good if it were — and even an assassin with a powerful weapon would never have the office’s occupant in his line of sight since Saitou’s desk was a good six feet forward. Still, he would probably get used to the stupid things eventually.

It was ironic, when he’d just been grouching about the advent of intruders unrelated to police business in his space, how his heart leapt at the sight of Sano’s head poking through the door. And there was something like the exact opposite of irony — a feeling of interest, of piquancy, based not on contradiction but on precise similarity — about the way Sano’s face lit up when he saw Saitou.

“Here you are!” the rooster said cheerfully as he opened the way more fully and stepped inside, closing it firmly behind him. He studied the office with a quick and seemingly fairly negligent eye before returning his happy gaze to Saitou and sauntering toward him. “This is nice! I’ve never seen this part of the station before, only the shitty downstairs.” As something seemed to occur to him, he frowned slightly and added, “Funny how it gets less Japanese as it gets nicer up here.”

A recent conflation of ‘refurbish’ or ‘improve’ with ‘westernize’ was one aspect of the movement Saitou did actively disapprove of, but, though he admired Sano for making the point, he was too impatient to know something else to pursue that topic right now. “How did you find my office? Have you been invading every room on the second floor looking for me?”

“Well, only the unlocked ones,” Sano replied without compunction, placing both hands on Saitou’s desk and bending to give him a cheeky grin. “And I only just peeked in to see if I had the right room; I didn’t interrupt anything.”

Saitou leaned back in his chair and, after a long drag, blew cigarette smoke up into the young man’s face. The harshest expression he could command, however, was a wry smile at the thought of Sano startling every single officer and secretary all along the hallway in his quest to visit his relatively new lover at work for the very first time. He tried to concoct a reprimand, but his brain kept stumbling over that idea — Sano was visiting him at work — and suggesting statements and actions completely different both from what needed to be said and done and even what was feasible to say and do in this context. Finally all he managed was, “Well, now that you know where my office is, you can avoid harassing my co-workers going forward.”

“That sounds like an invitation to come back in here whenever I feel like it.” Sano’s grin had intensified, and now he knelt upward onto the desk, drawing his second leg after so he straddled the paperwork Saitou had been busy with and the wolf would be forced to reach right between his wide-angled thighs should he wish to rescue it.

“You have a gift for selective interpretation.” Not favoring how inaccessibly far above him Sano’s face now hovered, Saitou stood, reaching past the young man on the desk to stub out his cigarette in the ash tray as he did so. This was going to fully confirm the presumed invitation for Sano to return routinely, but to be honest Saitou hadn’t really planned on contradicting it. Instead he put one hand on each of Sano’s knees to protect the stack of sheets in between, and moved in close.

Sano’s arms wrapped eagerly around Saitou’s neck, crossing at the wrists as he tilted forward to bring his face nearer the other man’s. “What time do you get off?” he asked in a tone that was half faux-casual flirtation and half ridiculous husky seduction.

“Not until I get you into bed,” Saitou replied with a smirk, sliding his hands off Sano’s knees and halfway up his thighs on the inside curve, ruffling the overshadowed and largely forgotten papers.

Sano chuckled appreciatively and bent to close the distance between them. His breath tasted like sake and something slightly spicy and the even spicier anticipation of the promised nighttime activity.

Just then, noisy booted footsteps came pounding up the hallway outside so quickly and loudly that both men looked toward the door. “Chou,” Saitou muttered in some irritation, withdrawing his hands disappointingly from their sneaky upward progress.

Sano grunted in similar annoyance and, bracing himself abruptly on Saitou’s shoulders, gave a little spring off the desk, barely missing sending the entire stack of paperwork flying. He’d no sooner hit the floor on the far side from the room’s entrance than he’d ducked behind one of the unnecessarily elaborate curtains beside the window and concealed himself completely.

Saitou wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Yes, it was a brand-new relationship Chou didn’t know about, and, yes, they’d been in a pretty compromising position just now, but if Sano planned on making these visits a regular thing, trying to keep them a secret from Saitou’s assistant seemed futile and not worth the effort. Still, it was a brand-new relationship Chou didn’t know about, and Saitou did take a certain amount of delight in the delicious novel privacy of Sano’s presence.

He didn’t really have time to decide one way or another, since the aforementioned assistant came bursting in without knocking — they might need to have a conversation about knocking — and breathlessly right up to his desk without a pause. He slammed his hands down in a louder version of Sano’s earlier gesture and gasped out, “Commissioner’s on his way!”

“Thank you, Chou.” Both Saitou’s statement and the nod that accompanied it were slightly exaggerated in response to the over-the-top delivery of this mundane news. And when Chou continued to lean on the desk and catch his breath Saitou was forced to add, “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

Grudgingly Chou acknowledged this dismissal by standing straight and backing away a step. “You sure you don’t want me to–“

Saitou cut him off before he could complete whatever spurious offer he was about to make as an excuse to stick around and eavesdrop like the gossip he was. “I’m sure.”

“All right, fine.” And the broomhead made an exit as exaggerated as his entrance had been.

The latch had barely clicked when Sano’s warm hands were on Saitou’s neck, moving up and down in a stroking, almost massaging motion he liked very much. But the comment Sano had to make was, “Nice of him to warn you like that.”

“He does think he’s being nice,” Saitou admitted, giving Chou credit he rarely afforded him in person. “He’s the type of person who never wants his boss to drop by unexpectedly, and he assumes I feel the same.”

“And you think I’m like that too,” Sano concluded from Saitou’s tone, indignant but simultaneously laughing a little.

“You did approve his choice to come in here and ‘warn’ me.”

Taking hold of Saitou’s earlobes and using them as handles to tilt the officer’s entire head back, Sano looked down into his face with a stern expression. “I approved,” he said, “his choice to try to make your day easier.”

“You might make the same choice now and then,” Saitou smirked as Sano’s lips descended.

Before they could come to rest, however, there was a proper knock at the door. Saitou found he’d been balancing his seat on its two rear legs as he leaned back to look at Sano upside-down, for as his lover released him and darted behind the curtain once more, the chair thumped onto the rug below with surprising heaviness. It made Saitou’s “Come in” come out with more vehemence than he’d intended.

Here was, as Chou had indicated, Kawaji, accompanied for the moment by Uramura, though Saitou knew full well the police chief would be dismissed presently without much reason given. He always went with good grace, knowing ‘Fujita-kun’ to be more than what he’d ever been let in on, but while he remained in the room there was a sort of wistful curiosity about his every word and gesture that amused Saitou faintly — though perhaps not as much as, uncharitably, did his awareness that, at this private meeting between commissioner and agent, a former kenkaya and present layabout with no connection to the force except that he was fucking one of its members would be hearing all the interesting details the loyal and discreet Uramura was barred from (and probably wouldn’t even find them all that interesting).

And they weren’t all that interesting. It was a pretty standard meeting with Kawaji: important, engrossing, but nothing to get fired up about. Saitou paid no less attention and responded with no less engagement than usual, and Kawaji certainly didn’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary… and yet there was a distinct difference to the proceedings in Saitou’s mind that unquestionably sprang from the awareness of what waited for him behind that luxurious curtain. He had a hidden muse, a beautiful secret that made no real difference to the scene except to add an undercurrent of irrelevant entertainment as long as the conference lasted and a crackling anticipation for the moment it ended.

Eventually it did end, no sooner or later than they ever did, and, though Saitou hadn’t been impatient, precisely, he did feel something like relief — and definitely something like excitement! — as he watched Kawaji’s diminutive form disappear out the door. And once again, before the latter was even completely closed, Sano was upon him.

Whatever interest or amusement mirroring Saitou’s Sano had or hadn’t felt back there, he was evidently tired of running out of time and getting interrupted, for in this instance he wasted no words: he stepped immediately around into the narrow space between the seated Saitou and the desk, leaned down, and, braced firmly on the armrests, kissed him thoroughly. Saitou did not protest that he should really get back to work, glorying as he was in the taste and smell and nearness of Sano, the feel of his tongue in his mouth, and wishing this chair were big enough for Sano to fulfill the movement toward which he was obviously inclined and crawl into Saitou’s lap somehow. In fact gloved hands were making ineffectual tugging gestures at Sano’s flanks beneath the open, dangling sides of his gi.

And then they heard Chou’s boots in the hall again.

The sound Sano made as he broke free of the kiss and slipped away was almost more a laugh than a frustrated sigh, and Saitou rolled his eyes. It was annoying, but not as if they wouldn’t have plenty of opportunity for this kind of thing in days to come, or kiss many times over and much more intimately tonight after work. The newness of the relationship and the situation rendered the separation more aggravating than it really was.

The broomhead entered and reached Saitou’s desk in another whirlwind of gaudy garb and hair, but now seemed less panicked and more eager to hear all the juicy news. “So what’d he want?” he demanded.

“None of your business,” replied Saitou in as cool a tone as he could manage given the lingering heat of his mouth. “Get out; I have work to do.”

The dramatic Chou looked so utterly crestfallen, staggering backward this time as if he’d been struck, that Saitou was forced to relent and promise, “I’ll tell you about it later, when I have a chance.” After all, much of it hadn’t actually been strictly confidential, as least as far as Saitou’s assistant was concerned.

This seemed to be all Chou needed to cheer him, for he grinned and continued backing toward the door. “You better!” he said.

“Oh, and, Chou…” Saitou raised a hand, then continued when the broomhead paused. “I’m going to need you to start knocking before you enter.”

Appearing a little surprised at this new development, Chou tilted his head slightly and said, “Got it,” in an almost questioning tone — as if the edict to knock on a superior’s door instead of just bursting impetuously into the room was a peculiar one requiring explanation. But then his eyes strayed past Saitou’s lifted arm in a direction the officer realized might be somewhat dangerous, and a thoughtful expression took his face.

Cautiously, not daring to look behind him just yet, Saitou asked, “What is it?”

“You know…” Chou put one of his own gloved hands to his face, rubbing his chin with a finger. “I kinda like the new curtains.”

Now Saitou did turn and give the curtains — or at least one of them — a long, searching glance, and was able to assure himself that, with the opulent amount of cloth the things were made of, there was no hint of where Sano was hidden even to someone that knew he was there. Which meant Chou wasn’t making a snide comment but voicing an actual opinion.

With a faint smile as part of a thoughtful expression of his own, Saitou turned back to his subordinate and admitted at a deadpan, “They’re growing on me.”

This was for plaidshirtjimkirk’s November Quick Fics 2017 prompt, “Established Saisa where Sano visits Saito when he’s working and kisses him in his office.” It was only a barely established relationship, though XD

I’ve rated this story . For some author’s notes, see this Productivity Log.

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).

The Solution

Oct 9, 2017 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

The Solution

If Saitou had really been forced to decide which of them annoyed him more, he would probably have had to flip a coin.

Three men. Two rivals. One complicated problem.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes | Contains: Asexual Saitou | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Pining | Contains: Pre-relationship story for main couple(s) | Contains: Primarily conversation | Contains: Queer Chou | Contains: Queer Sano | Contains: Sano pursues Saitou | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Chou & Saitou | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | Pairing: Additional unlisted | POV: Saitou | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2017 | Setting: Canon

The Solution

The funny monotonous humming, alternately amusing and irritating, that Chou used to pass the time while he worked broke off suddenly, and Saitou glanced from where he sat in his own office to the tank-like outer area housing Chou’s desk. Based on the new ki discernible there, Sano had arrived on the scene. Now they would distract each other and get zero work done for an incalculable period of time; they always did.

After the rude greetings in jovial tones that could have misled anyone about the relationship between these two, Sano asked, “Saitou around?”

And Chou immediately replied, “Nah, he’s not here yet.” And though this might have been a deliberate lie — especially in light of the further conversation — Saitou thought it not unlikely the broomhead really was unaware of his presence; he’d entered his office at a moment when Chou had stepped away, and he wasn’t making a lot of noise in here.

“Damn,” was Sano’s response to the news

Saitou could hear the lazy grin in Chou’s tone as he said, “Well, no wonder he wouldn’t come in when you’re gonna be here.”

And the identical expression must have been on Sano’s face as he replied, “He’s probably just trying to spend as little time with you as he possibly can.” Though if Saitou had really been forced to decide which of them annoyed him more, he would probably have had to flip a coin. He wouldn’t truly have bothered trying to avoid either of them, though; the occasional annoyance was just part of the deal.

Chou replied, “Hey, he’s glad to have me. He was doing all this shit alone before; he’s never had an assistant he could trust.” And the listening Saitou had to admit this was true; he’d never told Chou it was the case, but evidently the broomhead had figured it out on his own.

“I do good work for him too!” was Sano’s defiant response. “I’ve turned up loads of important information for him.” Which was also true — Sano had a gift for reading a crowd, a room, or a witness that spoke to a highly developed, if largely subconscious, analytical ability Saitou greatly valued. He was far more intelligent than many would have guessed. And where Chou was conspicuous both visually and in a sense of showmanship he simply couldn’t abandon, the roosterhead, despite his almost equally ridiculous clothing and hair, could fit into many an unexpected group and winnow out of it whatever Saitou needed to know.

“Yeah, too bad you have to leave writing it up to me, since you’re so damn hopeless at that.” There was that grinning tone again: a surprisingly un-biting tease that was also perfectly accurate — Chou, far more meticulous and systematic than many would have guessed him, had a talent for police paperwork that Saitou also greatly valued. Where Sano was semi-literate, sometimes completely inarticulate, and certainly disorganized, Chou had raised the efficiency of Saitou’s operation to a degree the wolf had never anticipated when he’d begun working with him.

Sano pointed out, “But at least I’m behind him with all his goals. I even totally forgive him for stabbing me when we first met, ’cause it was all for justice and shit.”

“I’m totally behind him too,” Chou protested, though his tone turned to more of a grumble as he went on. “I actually follow laws now, and I never kill anyone except when I need to for work.”

Though unsure whether he was more exasperated at the description of his personal policies as ‘for justice and shit’ or Chou’s long-suffering air of martyrdom, Saitou had to admit (to himself; he never would have said it to them) that he appreciated the sacrifice and change in lifestyle enacted by each for his sake. Sano could still be cluelessly trailing Battousai around and getting nothing done, and Chou could have run off long ago to murder people and steal their swords, yet they were both here dedicating at least some of their not inconsiderable energy to helping him make a difference in the government and the country.

“Way to be totally morbid about it!” If Sano’s laughter was any indication, however, he had no real objection to Chou’s references to his homicidal past. “See, I’m happy all the time–” Saitou didn’t really think this was true, though he did find Sano’s intense and often rapidly shifting emotional state compelling– “and he needs that. He isn’t happy nearly as much as he should be; he needs someone cheerful around.”

“He sure as hell need a distraction sometimes,” Chou agreed. “It’s just this endless grind for him, and he’ll never be able to deal with all the corruption. But that’s where I come in! He likes hearing about my swords, and that helps him think about something else for a while.”

The idea as stated was not entirely correct; it wasn’t so much that Saitou specifically enjoyed hearing Chou talk about his ever-expanding collection as that he was amused and grudgingly impressed by Chou’s unfailing interest and extensive knowledge. And it wasn’t impossible that he did need cheering and distracting more — and more frequently — than he would be willing to admit. It displayed a greater degree of thoughtfulness than anyone could have expected of these two — and certainly more than Saitou was accustomed to having in his life — that Sano and Chou recognized this.

But he couldn’t be entirely pleased at the thought, nor at what he was overhearing. They were confirming, out there, what he’d long quietly and somewhat worriedly believed: that their desire to impress him went beyond the professional. That they weren’t merely ‘behind him with all his goals.’

“I’m distracting too, you know!” And was that ever right! Sano had such a vibrant, entertaining personality that Saitou had never been satisfied — had never been able to stop dwelling on him — until he’d secured him to his employ. The same thing could be said of Chou, however — there was a reason he’d snapped him up the moment he learned about the broomhead’s amnesty deal, after all — so if he’d had to choose which of the two was more distracting, he would have to bring out that coin again.

“I’m never scared to say exactly what I think about him right to his face,” Sano went on proudly, as if this was a mighty accomplishment rather than a childish and somewhat annoying behavior prone to getting in the way of business.

Sardonically Chou replied, “Yeah, too bad ‘what you think’ and ‘how you feel’ are two different things.” And they both sighed. After a long, pensive silence during which Saitou didn’t even pretend to be working rather than following the drama going on just outside his office with an avidity he wouldn’t have wanted to admit to anyone, Chou spoke again. “And I think he likes me being kinda roundabout. Makes conversation interesting, you know?”

It fascinated Saitou that they neither ever denied the other’s claim — that by neglecting to argue Chou had tacitly admitted Sano’s presence was cheering, and Sano that Chou’s conversation was interesting. The two were a volatile, possibly explosive combination, but for all that not, Saitou believed, incompatible. The issue was that they hadn’t realized their chemical compatibility; each had another mixture in mind. And he didn’t necessarily object to that idea, except for one glaring problem.

“You don’t need to do anything to make conversation with Saitou interesting,” Sano said. “It already kinda… crackles… if you know what I mean.”

Chou sounded as if he did know what Sano meant as he replied regretfully, “Yeah… He’s sexy as shit.”

And there was the glaring problem.

“I can barely look at him without getting into an argument,” Sano mused, “and he treats you like the worst kind of peon… I wonder which is better.”

“Or… Juppongatana or Sekihoutai — which is worse?”

Sano gave a surprisingly mirthless laugh, and another silence followed.

Presently Chou said, “You know he’s got files on both of us, right?”

“Does he?” Sano wondered in surprise. “I mean, of course he would, but I never really thought about it…” And temptation already sounded strong in his voice even just with this beginning of an idea.

“Not like they’d tell us which of us he’d rather get horizontal with, but it might be interesting to see what he does have to say about us.”

Saitou barely had time to reflect that he’d rather not ‘get horizontal with’ either of them — or anyone, which was precisely his dilemma in this situation — when the sound of Chou’s chair scraping across the floor indicated he had more important things to think about. Not that he was likely to be the one flustered by the revelation that he’d overheard their entire conversation, just that things would probably come to a confrontation now and he needed to be prepared for his part.

The door burst open with the impetuosity of movement exhibited by both of his assistants, so it was impossible to say which of them had done it, and they piled into the room.

“Discuss me in my absence all you want,” Saitou said from where he sat at his desk, “but prying into my files is going too far.”

Though his words had been cool, they seemed to have just the opposite effect on the faces of his subordinates. He found it was a fairly attractive shade of red on both of them.

“What the serious fuck?” Sano demanded. As was often the case with him, the emotions of the situation (regardless of what they specifically were) caused his hands to ball into fists as he took an angry step forward. “How long have you been here?”

“Really, ahou, what kind of question is that? I know it was an engrossing conversation, but do you really think I could have sneaked past you at any point?”

“You’re a damn sneaky bastard,” the roosterhead shot back, “so maybe!” His face had gone even redder. Chou, more circumspect (just as he’d said a minute before), stayed silent, but Saitou thought he too was blushing a little harder at this clear indication that the wolf had been there all along.

“It is my office,” Saitou pointed out.

“So then you probably heard all that shit we were saying out there.” The nonchalance Sano attempted at this juncture was far too little too late, but it was funny he was trying.

“You were talking rather loudly. It’s been difficult to get any work done in here.” Which was true, but not for the blandly insulting reason Saitou implied.

“So there’s no point pretending!” After a deep breath and never breaking eye contact with Saitou, Sano demanded, “Which one of us do you like better?”

“You hired me way earlier,” Chou hastened to remind his boss, speaking for the first time since entering the room. “You musta liked what you saw in that jail cell.”

“Yeah, but he met me earlier than that.” Sano addressed Chou rather than Saitou in order to argue the point more directly. “He liked what he saw on the dojo steps!” And Saitou almost couldn’t believe this was devolving into, ‘Well, I saw him first.’

“Yeah, but then he stabbed you.”

“He left you in the jail cell.”

Saitou didn’t even bother trying to keep the amusement from his tone as he asked, “Can’t you idiots think of a better way to solve this than trying to determine which of you I’ve abused less?”

“Yeah!” Sano took another vigorous step forward, raising his fist as if for a fight rather than what he was about to suggest. “Yeah, I can! All we gotta do is each of us kiss you, and that’ll clear everything up!”

“You think so?” Now Saitou was on the verge of laughter, though he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the idea. Kissing he didn’t mind so much — he was lucky Sano hadn’t demanded, in that straightforward way of his, something far more inappropriately intimate to prove this point — but he couldn’t be confident the demonstration would have the desired effect.

But Chou was grinning, the expression devious and anticipatory. “Yeah, that’s perfect. Good idea, tori.” And Saitou thought he could read the true thoughts behind the approving words: Chou too doubted the efficacy of this plan for actually determining which of them Saitou liked better, but was totally onboard with any course of action that would win him a kiss he hadn’t otherwise expected to receive.

Saitou looked back and forth between their agitated but eager faces, and found a smirk growing slowly on his own as he thought he began to see the formula laid out before his mind’s eye. It was still a volatile situation, but he believed he knew now how to work his way through it. Finally he said, “All right.” Then he raised a gloved hand to stop Sano’s immediate impetuous advance. “On one condition.”

Sano and Chou shot each other an almost conspiratorially nervous look, then turned their eyes back toward Saitou in mute curiosity.

“For every kiss I give either of you,” Saitou told them calmly, “you to have to kiss each other first.”

Chou’s left eye popped open in astonishment, while Sano’s response was a hoarse, “…the fuck?”

Saitou’s smirk widened. “You heard me. Get to it.”

The immediacy and lack of complaint or question with which they obeyed was not only flattering — they wanted to get at him quicker — but also promising — they truly didn’t mind this. And he had to admit, it was even nicer than he’d expected to see them together like that. They seemed to fit remarkably well, and know instinctively what motions of lips and tongue — because, oh, yes, there was tongue involved — would be most enjoyable. It lasted a lot longer than even Saitou had anticipated, and certainly, based on their expressions when they broke apart, longer than its two participants had guessed it might. They stared at each other — Chou’s left eye, Saitou noted, still wide open — in bafflement and perhaps a growing mutual awareness for several long seconds after the kiss ended.

Saitou was more than satisfied. If they could get some of what they needed from each other and the rest of what they wanted from him, perhaps there was a solution to this problem after all. And perhaps they too were beginning to recognize that.

But they were also still desperate for the answer to the original question. In entertainingly similar movements, they shook themselves as if discarding, at least for the moment, the revelation that had just began to dawn, and turned toward Saitou almost in synchronization. “Well?” Sano demanded, and Saitou thought the redness of his face arose now from more circumstances than before. “That’s one! So who’s first?”

“Who, indeed?” Still smirking, Saitou reached into his pocket and pulled out a 10 sen piece. Without bothering to declare which of them he’d assigned to which side of the coin, he sent it spiraling into the air with a flick of his thumb. Three pairs of eyes watched it rise, flashing, and then begin to descend.

This story, which I’ve rated , is dedicated to plaidshirtjimkirk because it was directly inspired by their ficlet Tough Love. For some author’s notes, see this Productivity Log.

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).

Where the Love-Light Gleams

Dec 25, 2008 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

“…he’s got nobody to spend Christmas with… he pretends not to care, but you should hear him whining about the Christmas music on the radio…”

Saitou isn’t terribly pleased at the approach of Christmas and the winter break; Sano thinks he knows the reason and what to do about it.

Author's Star Rating: 2.5 | Category: Saitou and Sano one-shots | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Pining | Contains: Pre-relationship story for main couple(s) | Contains: Primarily conversation | Contains: Queer Sano | Contains: Sano pursues Saitou | Genre: Drama | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Sano | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2008 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S.

“Well! I’m gonna fail my English class,” Sano announced as he shed his backpack, sat down heavily, and placed squarely in the center of the table his tray full of tacos.

Sano’s companion, immediately pushing the tray away from where it encroached upon his own lunch space, glanced up through spidery bangs and remarked, “You were already saying that before you took the final.”

“Yeah, well, now I know for sure. Stupid little mini essays…”

“You don’t seem terribly concerned.”

Sano shrugged. “It’s hard to be really worried about anything this close to break.”

With a scowl, Saitou returned to the task of applying mustard to his sandwich. “That attitude seems to be contagious, if my last class was any indication.”

Sano always observed Saitou’s lunch with some amusement. The older man seemed to have a stock of frozen sandwiches, comprised only of meat and cheese (which would be thawed by lunch time), onto which he would then put lettuce and tomato from a ziplock and mustard from a packet. What entertained Sano most about this was the mental image of Saitou at home painstakingly laying out the meat and cheese on twenty sandwiches at a time in order to freeze them to take to work every day. Sano had long since run out of energy to tease him about it, however, so today it didn’t interrupt their conversation. “I seriously can’t blame anyone for trying not to think about the kind of finals I’m sure you give,” he grinned as he unwrapped one of his tacos. “Taking one of your classes is probably about the same as suicide.”

“So you’ve theorized before,” Saitou replied — somewhat sourly, Sano thought.

“Well, I’ve just got one more final at 1:45,” the younger man said through a mouthful of spicy beef and lettuce, “and then I’m done! Then it’s home for Christmas!”

“Idiotic song.” It seemed at first that Saitou’s statement was an answer of some sort, and Sano blinked in confusion before he realized what he’d last said had overlaid the same words emanating in wavering, sonorous tones from the speakers above.

At these latter he glanced up pointlessly as he wondered, “Is it?” He hadn’t really been paying attention to the music.

“He says he’ll be home for Christmas,” the teacher elaborated in some irritation, “that whoever he’s talking to can plan on him being there. But at the end he admits it may only happen in his dreams. With as slowly as he’s singing, they might already have made all of their plans by the time he gets around to letting them know he may not actually come home.”

Sano chuckled. “You’re right,” he admitted; “seems pretty rude. Which reminds me I forgot to email my dad.”

“You mean,” Saitou wondered with exaggerated expression and tone of incredulity, “you haven’t mentioned your plans to him every day for the last two weeks?”

“I don’t talk to my dad every day,” retorted Sano. “And I’m excited to go home, OK? You know, since my dad can afford to eat more than, like, three times a week?”

Though Saitou’s monosyllabic laugh reiterated his attitude toward poor college students — especially, Sano was all too aware, poor college students that didn’t budget very well and spent half of the week’s food money on one day’s lunch at the cafeteria Taco Bell — still he seemed to be in a worse mood than usual. Was it just because of finals?

Even in retrospect, Sano was unsure what had prompted him, that cool day back in early September, to go sit down across the little table from what was obviously a teacher ousted from the faculty lounge by the construction then in progress. He was equally uncertain why said teacher had put up with him when a mere half hour’s conversation had evinced the man’s disliking of the human race in general and freshmen in particular. How it had then become a custom for the two of them to eat lunch together every weekday, exchanging news and insults and the occasional joke, was as much a mystery as the other points. Sano liked to think there was a subconscious and perhaps precognitive explanation for it, but always reminded himself firmly not to get his hopes too high.

Of course, his hopes had to have some sort of elevation today, given what he proposed to propose… and he feared that nearly an entire semester of repressing his optimism might be responsible for the complete unpreparedness he felt for the task.

All of a sudden Saitou rolled his eyes, the motion of the irises seeming very pointedly directed toward the ceiling (and therefore, presumably, the speakers therein and the music the latter were playing).

“What now?” Sano wondered, sucking on his drink.

“Why would any sane person want to be wished a ‘merry little Christmas’ like some kind of backwater idiot?” Saitou shook his head and finished with muttered disdain, “I’m surprised the song doesn’t use the word ‘y’all’ in it anywhere.”

Leaning his chin on his fist Sano replied with a grin, “Not much into making the Yuletide gay?”

Saitou just rolled his eyes again.

Then as silence fell but for the continuation, above their heads, of the song in question, Sano took a surreptitiously deep breath, working up his courage. Finally he said, as casually as he could manage, “Speaking of Christmas, I got you a present.”

This caused Saitou to look up from his meal rather abruptly. He expressed no surprise at the announcement, however, merely stared.

Sano tried not to let Saitou hear him clearing his throat as he bent and retrieved the wrapped package from his backpack. He wasn’t exactly heartened by Saitou’s immediate raising of an eyebrow as the object changed hands.

“It’s a tie,” Saitou said flatly. It wasn’t even a remotely inquiring tone; he wasn’t guessing.

“How the hell do you know that?” demanded Sano.

“Because you were as uncreative packaging it as you were selecting it.”

“Hey, it could be anything!” Sano didn’t want to admit that, being fully conscious of the possible implications of a present, he’d chosen as generic a gift as he thought would still be even the slightest bit meaningful. “Just because it’s about the size and shape of a box a tie comes in doesn’t mean…” But he trailed off as Saitou removed the wrapping paper and disclosed the tie within.

The eyebrow rose even higher as Saitou looked, and the expression of wordless incredulity now turned toward Sano bordered on the reproving. Finally Saitou demanded, “And what on earth makes you think I would be caught dead wearing something like this?”

Despite the premonition that his gift might provoke this precise reaction, Sano felt, in addition to a little crestfallen, the stirrings of irritation. “I swear every teacher here’s got a Christmas tie except you,” he explained. “You always wear those boring ones with diamonds or those little bent teardrops with shit all over them.”

“Nobody expects the Japanese teacher to wear a Christmas tie.” Saitou glanced again through the clear plastic at the chaos of candy canes that covered the article in question, rolled his eyes, and bent to stow the present away in his briefcase. Well, at least he hadn’t refused it outright.

Sano was about to protest that Christmas was celebrated in Japan as well, but stopped himself before he’d said a single word to that effect… it really would be too embarrassing if the discussion turned to the romantic nature of that particular holiday in that particular country. Instead, he continued to defend his choice. “Hey, at least I didn’t get you one with Santa or some shit on it, OK? I mean, I saw some pretty horrible and scary ones at the store. You should be thanking me for not getting you any of those.”

With a slight smirk that seemed to arise almost in spite of himself, Saitou shook his head and returned to his food. After a few moments he said grudgingly, “I suppose I should thank you for the thought, at least.” He didn’t actually thank Sano, but, really, that was close enough… and more than Sano had expected anyway.

Saitou usually brought vegetables to eat alongside his sandwich. As with the latter, Sano had long since run out of verbal ammunition to make fun of him for his elementary-school-healthy selections (and, since Saitou never ran out of ammunition, proper eating was a subject best avoided when Sano was having tacos). But he was tempted to dredge up some of the teasing statements he’d made back when he’d still been able to think of new ones, just because the silence was beginning to feel rather heavy. Logically he knew it wasn’t any more uncomfortable than any silence between them on any day, but it seemed worse because he still hadn’t managed to ask what he really wanted to ask.

He was on his last taco, still vacillating, and Saitou was finishing off his iced tea, when the teacher made his next comment. Predictably this was, “People who write Christmas music all seem to be morons.”

“Hey, I like this one,” protested Sano.

“‘Giddy-up, jingle-horse, pick up your feet,'” Saitou repeated in a drawn-out tone of utmost scorn, and Sano had to admit that the words sounded even stupider than usual in that dark, serious voice. “It might be less irritating if the idiot who wrote it had a basic grasp of the syntax of the original song.”

“OK, when you start using words like ‘syntax,'” Sano laughed, “that’s when I really stop caring.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot too,” Saitou muttered.

Sano didn’t bother getting annoyed at this insult (which was typical in any case), mostly because he thought he knew by now what really had Saitou so irritable — and was fairly certain it wasn’t the music itself. To test his hypothesis, he actually listened to the next song that came on, and voiced the first complaint about it that sprang to mind: “If he’d take off those blue suede shoes, I bet his Christmas wouldn’t be so blue.”

Saitou lifted an eyebrow in obvious disdain. This could merely have been a criticism of Sano’s powers of criticism, but Sano felt his theory was confirmed. “I just thought you could use some help in your Grinching,” he explained.

The eyebrow rose even higher, now in skepticism. “‘Grinching?'”

“Well, you’re all kinds of hating Christmas today.”

“I’m not hating Christmas,” Saitou contradicted. “I have no feelings one way or another about Christmas. It’s this stupid music I can’t stand.”

“And my present.”

The slight shift in Saitou’s expression interested Sano; he wasn’t quite sure he could pinpoint what exactly had changed, but somehow its annoyance stood out distinctly from the previous. “If you were going to waste money,” the teacher admonished, “you might as well have bought me something useful.”

“How the hell is a tie not useful?!”

“A tie I’m likely to drop off at Goodwill next week is–”

“You wouldn’t!” Sano scowled at the other man, pounding a fist onto the table so the remains of his lunch jumped. “I know you’re a jerk, but seriously.”

Saitou’s ambiguous answering smirk indicated he was slightly cheered. This didn’t last long, however, for the moment some incredibly obnoxious chorus of kids and a consequently very creepy-sounding adult singer burst out of the speakers with the beginnings of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Saitou stood abruptly. “I need a cigarette,” was the only explanation or invitation he offered, leaving Sano to clear up the table and hasten after him as quickly as possible.

By now Sano definitely believed he knew exactly what was wrong, and also exactly how to handle it; the only remaining point of uncertainty was exactly how Saitou would respond. This resulted in a return of his nervousness as he continued to attempt to decide exactly how to word his statement. Heartened as he was by the apparent accuracy of his hypothesis, his state of encouragement had been largely canceled out by the extended response to his present. How the hell was he supposed to put this so it sounded appealing and casual and… not-stalkerish?

The issue, luckily, largely left his hands. As he joined Saitou in the frigid shadow of the building on the north side, snow crunching beneath his feet and his breath as visible as the smoke Saitou was already exhaling, his pocket gave a chirp indicating that the lack of signal inside had caused him to miss yet another call. Withdrawing his cell, he noted that this had actually been someone he wanted to talk to. Turning away from the teacher, who was watching him wordlessly, he called back. As he conversed, he couldn’t help being acutely aware of how the discussion must sound to someone that could only hear half of it:

“Hey, dad, what’s up? …nah, I just had no signal… …no, I got one more this afternoon… …pretty good, all except English, but I knew that would suck… …yep! So I’ll probably be there around three or four… …nah, I’m good… …hey… um, do you mind if I bring someone home with me? …no, not even a girl, actually; it’s a friend from school — well, sortof — actually he teaches here… …nah, he only teaches Japanese history and boring shit like that… …yeah, he is, and his family’s all still over there — and he hates them all anyway — so he’s got nobody to spend Christmas with… …no, he doesn’t have any except me, far as I can tell… he’s kindof an asshole… …nah, he pretends not to care, but you should hear him whining about the Christmas music on the radio… …no, no, you’ll like him… …really? OK, cool… …see you tomorrow, then… …yeah, bye.”

Snapping the cell phone shut, he replaced it in his pocket and took another subtly deep breath, bracing himself, before turning to face his companion. Saitou was staring at him with the same skepticism he’d displayed a couple of times already today, but now there was a touch of something else to it — curiosity, perhaps? Sano had spent a lot of time studying Saitou’s facial expressions since he’d met him, but feared it would take a good deal longer than a single semester — years, maybe — to understand them completely. And he refused to allow himself to believe there was some kind of pleased surprise in that look. Just in case.

“Well?” he asked, trying hard not to allow his tone to express his uncertainty. The precise interpretation of Saitou’s arrangement of features still eluded him, so Sano added, “Your last class is done by eleven tomorrow, right? Think you can stand to sit in a car with me for, like, four hours?”

Finally Saitou’s stillness broke as he raised his cigarette to his lips, but his eyes hadn’t left Sano’s face; Sano thought his expression was more contemplative now than anything else. At last he said, “That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you’re going to play any Christmas music during the drive.”

A huge wave of relief and joy washed over Sano at these words, but, remembering that he wanted to seem not-stalkerish, he restrained himself from any overt display of any such emotion. “I thought you wouldn’t care so much,” was his reply instead, “now that your Christmas isn’t going to suck.”

“You have an inordinately high opinion of your own entertainment value.”

“Hey, my family’s plenty entertaining,” objected Sano with a grin.

“And you think your dad will like me,” the teacher mused, stepping to the ash tray to dispose of his cigarette butt. After this, however, he made no motion to go back into the building.

Cold as it was, Sano felt his heart warmed by the thought that Saitou didn’t mind standing out here in the snow, with him, all alone, making plans with him to go home with him and meet his family. That seemed like considerable progress for someone that didn’t think too highly of the human race in general and freshmen in particular; actually, it seemed like the best Christmas present Sano had received in many years.

“He’ll like you better if you wear that tie,” he said, grin widening.

“You’re already getting me to help you celebrate a holiday that means almost nothing to me,” replied Saitou, his smirk also widening slightly. “Don’t push your luck.”


This story is very unremarkable, and I’ve rated it , but it might have been better if I’d ever gotten around to writing the second half of it. Let’s take a look at what I had written, shall we?

*

It had taken Saitou an anomalously long time to see the truth. Neither the unprecedented companionship nor the unexpected present nor even the surprising invitation had given him a clue. He might have begun to realize what was going on by his own happy reaction to that invitation or the unanticipated pleasure he’d taken in the four-hour drive to Sano’s hometown, if those hadn’t been so engrossing — and, therefore, distracting — in themselves. In fact, it was not until they’d reached their destination and greetings and introductions were over with that Saitou had his first real, jolting hint at the truth.

The little sister, Uki, had apparently demanded more space in which to do her homework, and thus what had previously been the spare room was now devoted to computer desks. It was Sano’s reaction to the news that his guest would have to sleep on one storey of his own bunk bed that gave him away: a startled look and noise accompanied by an intense blush he immediately tried to hide — all of them just a little too vehement for the news in question.

Saitou’s own surprise was equally great, simply because the concept had never crossed his mind. Looking back at his interaction with Sano over the last three months, he was consequently disposed to think himself somewhat blind. But, then, the general consensus around here seemed to be a certain set of idiotic stereotypes for men that liked other men, and perhaps he’d subconsciously absorbed that attitude to the exclusion of more logical reality.

Now all he had to do was decide how he felt about this.

In the meantime, Sano had shaken himself out of his shocked stupor and accepted the situation with a show of backbone. But there wasn’t much mystery behind his excessive sudden embarrassment in his room when he unthinkingly asked, “Do you want top or bottom?”

And perhaps the fact that Saitou immediately, amusedly ran his eyes up and down Sano rather than the bed before answering, “Top, I think,” helped at least to start answering the question about how Saitou felt. He’d never really looked at Sano in this light before; he’d been aware that the kid was good-looking, thanks both to his objective observation thus far and to the reactions of others that made it rather absurdly evident, but that awareness had been nothing but clinical up until now. Now… perhaps it was evolving.

*

Uki has several of her barely-teenage friends over for a Christmas party to celebrate the end of school. Several of them are all googly-eyed over Uki’s hot brother and Uki’s hot brother’s hot friend.

*

A gesture from one of the high-schoolers caught his eye, and he noticed that Uki and another girl were having an intense, rather giggly conversation behind their hands. It seemed to involve looking over at him a lot. Not really interested in what they might be saying, he turned away again — only to find Sano’s eyes, narrowed with suspicion, pointed in the direction Saitou’s had just been. Finally Sano also looked back, looked around, and abruptly turned red.

Saitou wasn’t sure what had caused Sano’s blush this time, but the boy’s embarrassment was getting more and more difficult to pretend to ignore. In a pointed effort to do so, however, he directed his attention again toward the girls… and that was when he caught the whispered word ‘mistletoe.’

He didn’t glance upward. He didn’t need to.

Now he couldn’t look at Sano or Sano’s sister, and the one consolation, as things currently stood, was that if the little girl did work up the nerve to kiss him — something Sano certainly wouldn’t do — watching Sano’s reaction was a guaranteed source of entertainment that might fully make up for it.

*

Sano’s dad asks them to set out the Christmas stuff for him on Christmas Eve, since Outa has caught on to the secret and will be staking out dad’s room. They do this, and then, before heading back to Sano’s bedroom…

*

“I believe…” he began pensively, giving Sano a thoughtful stare. Sano wasn’t looking at him, however, so Saitou left it at that for the moment. When Sano finally did glance over, curious, Saitou finished. “You noticed that mistletoe before your sister did. I believe that means you owe me a kiss.”

“What?!”

*

Outa, coming to check whether the presents are somehow there, walks in on them kissing.

*

“Are you guys gay?”

The concept ‘bisexual’ was not really something he wanted to explain to an eight-year-old, let alone the even more difficult ‘bi-curious’ — so Saitou just nodded.

“OK,” said the boy, and turned toward the Christmas tree.

*

Bit of a shame I never finished that, isn’t it? It’s pretty damn cute. But more things are a greater shame than just the lack of a fun second half of a mediocre story.

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).


Hopeless Cause

Oct 17, 2008 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

Is it normal to try endlessly to untangle the dynamics of a relationship that was destined from the beginning to be twisted and confusing?

Kenshin is selflessly supportive when he’d rather be severe, or at least supplicating.

Author's Star Rating: 4 | Category: 30_kisses | Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes | Contains: Angst | Contains: Disapproval of the Saitou/Sano relationship | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Pining | Contains: Primarily conversation | Contains: Queer Kenshin | Contains: Queer Sano | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Kenshin & Sano | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: First person | POV: Kenshin | POV: Present tense | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2008 | Setting: Canon


I’m enjoying a cup of tea before I get on with my other chores, watching the clean laundry wave slightly in a light, cool breeze, when Sano wanders in. His looks have been unusually despondent lately, but as yet I haven’t been able to get him to tell me why. Today he seems even more cast down than before, sighing as he sinks onto the porch beside me, and looks as if he hasn’t slept well the last few nights.

I return his unenthusiastic greeting, and that I can do so with “Good morning, Sano” is another indication something is wrong; usually we don’t see Sano here until the afternoon. I don’t delay in asking him, though I doubt he’ll be any more forthcoming than he has been the last few times I’ve inquired.

“I don’t know,” he replies somewhat dully. When he sees me patiently waiting for elaboration, he sighs again and goes on. “I mean I really don’t know. I don’t know if I’m going crazy or what.”

He doesn’t appreciate being pressed to explain his feelings, so I simply wait. And since I’m sure he never had such consideration from him, maybe that will invite him to open up to me.

“It’s been months,” he says in a tone of protestation, as if responding to some conversation we haven’t actually had yet, then adds more softly, “Five months.”

I don’t correct him out loud; picking at Sano’s inexactness is something he would do. Four months and twenty-five days is close enough to five, at any rate. And at least now I have a general idea of what’s bothering him. I’m not exactly shocked.

Sano sighs and mutters, “I just wish I knew if this is normal, or if…” And he shakes his head.

I want to shake him, to insist he tell me what’s wrong, to demand, “Why could he always get you to literally shout out what you were feeling, but I have to sit through your uncertain mutterings and head-shakings just to get a hint?” But I won’t do anything of the sort; I won’t be like him. Still, I can’t bring myself to say nothing, so after several moments of silence I prod gently, “If what is normal, Sano?”

“That I can’t stop thinking about him,” he finally admits. “I knew it would stick around for a while — I know that’s normal — but I figured it would stop eventually… but it hasn’t.”

I want to sigh. I want to tell Sano that he isn’t worth thinking about and that, normal or otherwise, such obsessing isn’t healthy or wise. But at the same time, I want to be supportive of my friend like he never was. So I merely ask politely, “What kind of things do you think about him?”

“I can’t stop going over every little thing we said…” he replies, staring hard at the ground. “And then how I feel about it keeps changing. One minute I’m justifying something one of us said, and the next I’m blaming it for everything that happened. Is that normal?”

Is it normal to try endlessly to untangle the dynamics of a relationship that was destined from the beginning to be twisted and confusing? But while he might be more than willing to write Sano’s efforts off as pointless and tell him to find something better to do, I won’t be so callous. “So you are trying to assign blame?”

“Well…” I don’t think he would have gone on if I hadn’t asked. Why can’t he confide in me? “I thought I knew exactly whose fault it was back then, but now… goddammit…” He’s speaking with a little more energy than before as the emotions associated with his thoughts creep into his words. “First it’s mine, then it’s his, then it’s neither of us, then it’s both… there’s no right answer.”

I know the right answer: he was always the unreasonable one, and the only thing Sano did wrong in leaving was putting it off for so long. But somehow I don’t believe expressing that opinion so forcefully will encourage Sano to continue; I must remain relatively impartial. I can’t help asking, though, “Why do you blame yourself at all?”

He shrugs. “Little things. I keep thinking if only I’d said this or if I hadn’t done that… even when I’m pissed as hell remembering something he said or did, something inside me still wonders, What could I have done different? That’s not normal, is it?”

The whole thing wasn’t normal, Sano. Your attraction to him, your interaction with him, the way he treated you — none of it was normal. It would be so easy to open my mouth and just tell him all of this, tell him this and more, what I’ve wanted to for so long… but I won’t. There’s a time and a place for disparaging bluntness — something he needs to learn — and this isn’t it.

“But it’s not just that kind of shit, all about how it ended.” Finally Sano seems to be willing to go on without my prompting him. “It’s like something in my head still thinks we’re together, because everything I do, practically everything I just see, like walking down the street, I’m thinking of telling him about it before I even remember I’m not going to be talking to him anytime soon.”

He very rarely tells me about things he sees walking down the street, and he talks to me all the time. Am I surprised? Not particularly. Close to miserable? Yes.

“And I’ll think things… just stupid shit, the usual stuff I think whenever… and even though I know what he’d say if I told him — god, and it wouldn’t even be nice — I still want to tell him. Is that normal? I mean, it’s been five fucking months and I’m still wanting to tell him fucking everything…”

Him fucking everything and me almost nothing. Is that normal? Is it normal for a man to ignore his best friend — somebody who’s always there for him, would do anything for him — and throw away all his effort and thought and affection on someone who never deserved or appreciated it?

“And I remember things just out of the blue, and they affect me way the hell more than they should. The other day I remembered some funny conversation we had once, and it made me laugh ’til I was crying… or I’ll suddenly think about the last time he kissed me, and–” He turns away as he breaks off abruptly, obviously unwilling to tell me what reaction he had to that memory. I’m not sure I’m entirely disappointed he didn’t continue. There’s a part of me that wants desperately to know that kind of physical detail; it’s largely overridden by my politer side, but there’s no denying it’s there.

“And you know I’m a pretty happy guy most of the time,” he goes on, perhaps a little too quickly, “but every once in a while if something goes wrong, why the hell is it him I keep thinking of going to? Lately it’s been building up worse than usual. I’ve been trying to ignore it — that and all the rest of it — but I can’t help feeling like it’s just not normal to be thinking all of this after this long. I mean, at first, sure, but still?”

He pounds his face against his fist, and with his elbow propped on his knee and his leg drawn up so his foot can press against the porch pillar, his body appears strangely cramped and contorted — though perhaps it’s more his emotional state giving that impression.

“Tell me I’m not going crazy, Kenshin.” He looks up at me now almost imploringly, and I can see how much this really has him worried. “Tell me this is normal.”

If ever I wanted to call my friend an idiot, this is the moment. That he can be so utterly blind, both to what’s in his own heart and what’s right in front of him… He almost deserves to be ridiculed. But of course I won’t. It’s completely reprehensible to call the person you love an idiot, and I won’t be like him.

“Yes, Sano, that is all quite normal…” I take a deep breath, steeling myself, before finishing the statement. “…if you still love him.”

Sano is staring at me now, his mouth open slightly as if he was about to make some further point and suddenly has no breath left to say it with. His face, rather than red with the blush I was expecting, is actually a little pale. “I don’t…” he stammers. “I never… It wasn’t…”

My smile feels more patient and sad than teasing. “Yes, you did, Sano,” I tell him gently. It’s hard to continue, desperately hard, but I’m not the type that neglects to mention important details to his associates. That’s something he does. “And I think you still do.”

“But he…” Sano has gone even paler, and the fact that this concept is such a shock to him tempts me more than ever to apply that affectionately insulting epithet I know perfectly well Sano is only willing to receive from him.

And this is, quite possibly, the most painfully difficult thing I’ve ever said. “Sano, I would be very surprised if he does not love you in return.” Even if he doesn’t deserve to, I don’t add. Even if he barely has any idea what love is. Even if he could never come close to returning the kind of love you’re capable of. I would be very surprised, because anyone who knows you and doesn’t love you is completely insane.

“But… but it’s been five months,” Sano protests, and now I can hear, to my sorrow, a tone in his voice that is something like the beginnings of desperate hope. “He hasn’t said anything…”

“And neither have you,” I remind him quietly. I can’t go so far as to make a suggestion; from my very soul I’m aching to advise him to give up, to forget, to move on, to live down the emotion he’s finally recognizing, but after those few words I keep silent.

Sano stands abruptly. “God dammit…” he mutters, more to himself than to me, but I can read the purpose in that purposeless exclamation. I think I know Sano better than he ever could, and I can hear the self-castigation in that curse. He wonders why it took him so long to see; he wonders how badly he’s wounded the person he’s only just realized he loves; he wonders if it’s too late.

He turns to me at last, and his eyes are full now of pain and determination. At first he has nothing to say, and neither do I, so for several moments we stare at each other in silence. And, somewhat guiltily I must admit, I can’t help hoping that while our gazes are thus locked and Sano is in this mood of perception, he’ll somehow begin to notice at last how I feel. My emotions are mixed when, unsurprisingly, he doesn’t.

“Thank you,” he says intensely.

I can only nod, even as he turns to leave me.

Do I hope it won’t work out? Do I wish him failure in his endeavor, to see him back here within an hour even more unhappy than before? No. Unlike him, I don’t hold grudges. And I know a hopeless cause when I champion it. Still, I wouldn’t complain if this heaviness, this dark turmoil in the back of my head, this uncomfortable pressure on my heart were to abate somewhat.

With a slight sigh I stand and glance around the courtyard. Life goes on, after all; I suppose I’d better get started with the rest of my chores. But I do turn again before going inside and watch Sano walk away with a much lighter step than when he approached.

“Ahou ga…”


This story was for 30_kisses theme #4 “Our distance and that person.” I’ve rated it .

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).


Imaginary Moon

Sep 28, 2008 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction, Visual Art

“I heard somewhere that sometimes guys get turned into wolves under the full moon…”

Sano’s romantic night with Saitou is completely perfect, except for one little detail.

Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: 30_kisses | Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes | Contains: Abusive Saitou | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Queer Saitou | Contains: Queer Sano | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Genre: Drama | Genre: Romance | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Saitou | POV: Sano | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2008 | Setting: Canon | Visual art collection: Rurouni Kenshin | Visual art medium: Marker | Visual art medium: Tablet

There was no response to his knock, but this didn’t surprise him, given the hour. He believed, however, that Saitou was inside and not likely to ignore him all night, so after a few moments he knocked again more loudly. Listening carefully and still hearing nothing from within, he raised his fist to pound a third time — but at that moment the door opened.

Sano’s hand unclenched to wave at the irritated man glaring from the darkness within. Saitou looked pretty damn hot in a yukata, though Sano wondered why he’d bothered to put it on when he must have known who waited at the door.

“What,” Saitou demanded.

“I gotta show you something,” Sano replied. “Get clothes and come on.”

Saitou’s eyes rolled and narrowed at the same time. “Tomorrow,” he said flatly, “or maybe never.” And he started to close the door.

“No, no, no,” Sano protested, stopping the door’s progress with a foot. “You gotta see it right now. It’s — how do you cops put it? — time-sensitive.”

For a moment Saitou stared at him, probably trying to decide whether it would be more trouble to get whatever Sano had planned over with or put up with Sano’s disappointed harassment for the rest of the night, and finally gave a half-audible sigh. “Fine.” And he disappeared into the dark house.

“What do you mean ‘What am I talking about?'” Sano was demanding, sounding truly startled.

Saitou barely glanced up from his paperwork. “What I meant by that was, ‘What are you talking about?’ It seems a logical question when you come in here talking about ‘last night’ when I didn’t see you at all yesterday.”

“But you did see me last night,” Sano insisted, his apparent confusion only growing at Saitou’s words. “You know, when I came to your house and woke you up?”

Now Saitou looked up more pointedly, fixing Sano with a skeptical expression. “If you had done that, you would know better than to be in here bothering me now.”

Sano stared, as if searching for some sign on Saitou’s face that this was a misunderstanding. Saitou shook his head and went back to the work at his desk.

Sano couldn’t be sure Saitou wouldn’t just return to bed, leaving him standing at the door waiting until whenever he finally caught on, but it was a chance he had to take; he’d known perfectly well what Saitou’s initial reaction was likely to be in this situation, and had proceeded anyway. And given that Saitou hadn’t threatened him with physical violence if he didn’t get lost, things were already going pretty well. Sano alternated between listening hard for whatever Saitou was doing inside and hopping from one foot to the other glancing impatiently over his shoulder into the sky.

To Sano’s great relief, Saitou eventually did reappear, clad predictably in blue police pants and one of those sexy black shirts. Sano had hoped he would wear something more interesting, but at least he’d left off the jacket. With an air of supreme annoyance Saitou locked his door and turned to glare at Sano, who had already advanced a few paces toward the street like an expectant dog anticipating a walk.

“So what is it you’re showing me?” Saitou wondered darkly as he stalked toward him.

Sano seized the cop’s hand and tried to urge him along faster, but Saitou resisted and eventually shook free. “What are you showing me?” he demanded again, more insistently.

“I can’t tell you,” Sano said doggedly. “You just gotta see it.”

“Ahou, if you’ve dragged me out of bed just to look at some drunken animal or something–”

“No, it’s nothing like that. Besides, you thought that was as funny as I did.”

“It wouldn’t have been nearly so entertaining in the middle of the night.”

“Well, this isn’t anything like that.”

Again Saitou sighed quietly, quickening his steps slightly, obviously sure that whatever Sano had to show him was little more worth his time than the aforementioned, but apparently having decided on the get-it-over-with method of dealing with it.

“But…” By now Sano was thoroughly baffled. “I knocked on your door until you woke up and came outside! How can you possibly not remember that?”

Saitou threw Sano another quizzical look, eyebrow even higher this time. “And I didn’t kill you?”

“No! We went on a walk!”

“A walk.”

“Yes! ‘Cause the moon was really big and shit…”

“The moon.”

“Yes, dammit. It was really… pretty.”

“I see.”

Their destination lay not far from Saitou’s house, though the distance took longer to cover than it had the other direction since Sano had run to fetch his reluctant lover to come see. When Sano left the street, however, for the space where a couple of trees grew and the ground sloped up to a hill that stood behind two properties, Saitou complained again. “I will arrest you before I’ll let you make it look like I’m party to your trespassing.”

Sano rolled his eyes jovially. “Well, if you hurry up, we’ll be past their houses before anyone even starts to wake up.”

They’d been walking mostly in shadow until they topped the rise, the houses of Saitou’s neighborhood having blocked the ascending moon. But as they emerged from the trees and looked out, there seemed to be a surplus of light. Even after coating the downward slope of the hill and the treetops and the roofs below, it made the very air feel heavy and sparkling, and the river appeared full of that rather than water.

“Well?” Saitou demanded when they’d stood still for almost a minute.

Sano gestured. “Isn’t it great?”

Although Saitou didn’t look too terribly impressed, at least he also didn’t look away as he asked, “This is what you woke me up to look at? A nice view?”

“Even you said it was a nice view.”

“And you expect me to believe I not only got up in the middle of the night at your request, but actually went somewhere with you? And still didn’t kill you even when it was just the moon you’d dragged me out to see?”

“Holy shit, Saitou, I can’t believe you don’t remember all this happening! Do you have amnesia or something?”

“Ahou, try to be logical about this. Why on earth would I do what you’re describing?”

Sano looked away and said in a petulant tone, “Because maybe you like me a little.”

“Whether or not I like you has nothing to do with it. If I had work the next morning, there’s no way I would be out in the middle of the night with you.”

“But I remember it all, even if you don’t!” The desperation of Sano’s confusion was beginning to calm, and doubt seemed ready to creep in. “How could I remember all that if it didn’t really happen?”

“Sake?” suggested Saitou mildly.

“Well,” admitted Sano, his gaze shifting back and forth between the silver view and Saitou’s face, “it was also a test.”

“A test?” Saitou still did not look at him; however much he did or didn’t appreciate the breathtaking scene, he certainly was observing it meticulously — that or lost in thoughts of his own, perhaps entirely unrelated to the situation.

“I heard somewhere that sometimes guys get turned into wolves under the full moon…” Sano cleared his throat. “I thought maybe it might work backwards too.” Even from this angle he could see Saitou’s raised eyebrow. “I mean, turn a wolf into a real guy. Who likes to spend time with his boyfriend sometimes. You know?”

“I wasn’t drunk!” Sano burst out, sounding insulted. “You think I can’t tell when I was drunk the night before? I know you think I’m an idiot, but even an idiot can tell the difference between waking up after a night of drinking and waking up after other shit.”

“And where did you wake up?”

“On the hill.”

“Alone?”

“Like you’re ever there when I wake up.”

“Maybe it was a dream.”

“It…” Sano had obviously been about to discount this new theory just as immediately and energetically as the last, but apparently thought better of such a determined denial.

Finally, slowly, Saitou turned to face him, and Sano’s breath caught. A good percentage of the extra moonlight seemed to have pooled in the older man’s eyes, making them almost silver rather than gold, and they stared now into Sano’s with an intensity Saitou rarely wasted on him. “You…” Saitou reached out and took his hand. “…are a complete idiot…”

Sano’s spirits fell at the failure of his experiment, and thoughts flitted through his head of bitterly spending the remainder of the night in a bar somewhere cursing unromantic cops and their cynical ways — but this lasted only a moment before Saitou drew him close and kissed him, threading fingers leisurely through Sano’s hair and holding Sano’s body tight against his own with his other arm.

Given that he hadn’t really been prepared for his silly idea to work, this was something of a surprise. It was nothing, however, compared to how he felt when Saitou pulled back far enough to speak, still staring into Sano’s eyes, and finished his statement: “…and I love you more than anything in this world.”

“So what else did we supposedly do?” Saitou asked in a tone that could almost be called politely disinterested, “after I supposedly didn’t kill you for all this?”

“We were standing on top of the hill looking at the moon,” Sano explained, his voice sinking to a murmur as he continued. “You kissed me and said…” and he trailed off unintelligibly.

“I said what?” Saitou wondered.

“Something romantic,” Sano muttered, still almost inaudible.

Sano couldn’t help thinking the moonlight must actually have had some transformative effect, considering he’d never been able to wring even a standard ‘I love you’ out of the normal Saitou. This longer version of the phrase, the like of which he’d never expected to hear from his pragmatic lover, had sent his heart into a strange, quick, erratic pattern, and the night was suddenly hot. But he didn’t have a chance to comment on the wonder of it, rendered speechless as he was by an even greater wonder: Saitou released him and sank suddenly to his knees.

“And then?” prompted Saitou, still in the same relatively gentle tone as if humoring a lunatic or a small child.

“All right, fine, you’re right,” Sano admitted bitterly, “I probably was dreaming or something.” And he even seemed to be blushing slightly; Saitou hadn’t thought there was anything that could call up that reaction in Sano these days.

“It’s not a bad idea, though,” was the officer’s reflective concession as he returned yet again to his paperwork. He could almost hear Sano’s head snapping up to look at him hopefully. “Just the kind of romantic nonsense women like to read about. You should get your friend to put it in his newspaper. With different names, of course.”

As the recovering Sano attempted to remember how many times Saitou had ever done that before (something like maybe once), Saitou was encouraging him to give in to the demands of his trembling legs. And as soon as Sano lay in the grass without pants, it didn’t take long for Saitou to join him in a similar state.

Somewhat caustically, “At least the sex was good,” muttered Sano.

Saitou laughed and remarked softly, to no particular purpose other than derision, “Sex with you in a public place…” He shook his head. “Go home, ahou. I have work to do.”

After a long moment of silence during which Sano clearly didn’t leave, Saitou looked up again. The young man stood quite still, staring at him with wide, sad eyes, appearing so crestfallen and disappointed that Saitou really couldn’t stand it. “Why don’t you come by my house at some reasonable hour tonight?” he added, successfully making it almost sound like he’d meant to say it all along. “I doubt we can recreate your little fantasy, but I’m sure we can find something you’ll enjoy.”

This seemed to cheer Sano immensely, for the storm in his eyes cleared up and his demeanor brightened. “All right,” he said, though still a little morosely. “I’ll see you then.”

Saitou nodded and again returned his gaze to the papers in front of him as Sano finally left the room. Maybe now he’d be able to get something done. Then he should probably go home a little early; he needed to take a bath before Sano arrived, just to make absolutely certain the grass stains were gone from his knees.


Dear Saitou,

You are a terrible person.

Love, this faery.

This story is for 30_kisses theme #27 “Overflow.”

It has been suggested that the italicization here should be reversed, and for the longest time I resisted that proposal without precisely knowing why, since the choice of italicizing what I did was one of those instinctual things I wasn’t at first able to define. Eventually I realized I’d done it because, although it’s more standard for the scenes taking place farther in the past to be italicized, I like it better this way because it emphasizes that some aspect of reality in each scene is in question. In the end it turns out that there is more truth in the non-italicized portion of the story than in the italicized part, which seems appropriate. I’m not sure if this explanation makes sense, but to me it feels right the way it is.

I’ve rated this story .

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).


How Chou Got Fired

Jun 9, 2008 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

“He’d never find out,” Chou cajoled. “It’d be real easy.”

Trying to steal from your boss is never a good idea… especially when your boss is Saitou and what you’re trying to steal is his boyfriend.

Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: 30_kisses | Category: Saitou and Sano vignettes | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Primarily conversation | Contains: Queer Chou | Contains: Queer Saitou | Contains: Queer Sano | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Contains: Violence | Genre: Drama | Genre: Romance | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Chou & Sano | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Sano | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2008 | Setting: Canon

When Sano, bored as all hell, wandered into the police station looking for his lover, all he found was his lover’s assistant scribbling away messily at some paperwork or other at his tiny desk in the corner.

“Hey, tori,” Chou greeted him in a far more welcoming tone than usual, obviously glad of any excuse to set down his pen and think about something else.

“Hey, houki,” Sano replied, carefully pushing some of the things on Saitou’s much bigger desk aside to make room to sit. “Boss skipping out on work again?”

“If he was, you wouldn’t be here,” Chou grumbled, “since it’d be to fuck you.”

“Yeah,” Sano grinned complacently. “So where is he?”

Standing and stretching his long back, Chou reached his arms out and flexed his hands, trying to dispel the cramps induced by his small workspace. “Out investigating some shit he didn’t want me in the way of; no idea when he’ll be back.” He added as if it were the natural conclusion to these remarks, “I am so sick of this job.”

“Thought you said it was fun.”

“It was fun before I was a fuckin’ secretary.” Chou came out from behind his desk, giving it a vindictive push so it slammed into the wall, and stood in front of Sano with his arms crossed and an irritated expression. “These days he just gives me all the fuckin’ paperwork while he does the fun shit, and there’s never any end in sight, so I’m sitting in that little piece of shit–” he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the now-crooked desk– “all fuckin’ day and half the night.”

“That is tough,” Sano agreed, though, as he was busy wondering where Saitou might be, it came out sounding more absent than sympathetic. After a moment he added, somewhat more attentively, “Why are you still even here, if it’s that boring?”

Chou’s face went thoughtful. “That ain’t a bad question,” he muttered. “Maybe it is time for me to get the hell outta here…” Sano watched with growing interest as the frown melted slowly into a contemplative expression and then a slow, crafty smile. “You know…” Chou began slowly, almost as if deciding whether or not to say what he was pondering, “you and me could sneak outta town real easy without anyone knowing. Go find some fun somewhere.”

“Somewhere far away from obnoxious cops and paperwork, huh?” Sano chuckled.

“Exactly,” Chou replied, emphatic and now on the verge of enthusiasm.

Sano laughed again. “As if he couldn’t find us anywhere. Guy’s like a fucking bloodhound. Probably bring the paperwork, too. And his laundry for me to wash.”

“He wouldn’t waste the time looking,” Chou snorted with an unexpected level of derision. “He’d just find some other flunky to push that pen around and some other pretty boy to fuck.”

Sano blinked, the statement hitting him like a blow from out of nowhere along with the sudden startling realization that Chou was serious. He didn’t even know what to say; or, more accurately, didn’t know where to begin among the myriad astonished responses that came to mind.

Chou leaned forward suddenly, planting his hands on either side of Sano and bending down to stare into his face. “Come on,” he said, the crafty smile returning, “you gotta admit it’s a good idea. We could even leave the country. You wanna see the world; I know you do.”

Sano put his hand firmly over Chou’s nose and mouth and pushed, causing him to stumble back a step as Sano stood. He still didn’t quite know what to say; Chou was just too clueless for words. Finally he managed, his voice thick with incredulity, “Have you forgotten everything you know about everything or something?”

“Yeah, that’s my policy when I get tired of some shit and go somewhere else,” Chou replied, still serious and still evidently oblivious to Sano’s chagrin and surprise.

Sano stared at him. “All right, more to the point, have you forgotten I have friends and a jealous lover and kindof a life here?”

Again Chou snorted. “Beats me how you can call him your lover when he treats you like shit.” Now he was subtly advancing toward Sano, who was backing away just as gradually. “I’d treat you better than that.”

With a slow nod of disbelieving understanding Sano said in even greater incredulity, “So us fucking’s included in this plan of yours too.”

Chou’s eyebrows did an absurd little dance above his eyes, both of which, disturbingly, were now open and narrowed slightly. “Don’t say you never thought of it. You think I’m hot and we both know it.”

“So?” Sano wondered, his back dishearteningly meeting a wall. “I’ve got someone already.” Coming to grips with the fact that this was really happening, he was starting to get annoyed. Not angry yet — he knew how Chou was, and felt a little sorry for anyone that lived the way Chou did — but it couldn’t be long.

“You can’t really care all that much about that bastard,” the broomhead said dismissively. His gloved hands again came to rest on either side of Sano, and his face was once more a little too close. “You and me are way better for each other. We’re a lot more similar than you and him, and he’s so damn old anyway…”

Sano shook his head slightly. It was baffling, staggering that Chou, someone both he and Saitou saw constantly, could so completely have missed the development of their relationship. “Look,” he said firmly, “I am not running away with you. You can go and I won’t say anything for a couple of days if you want, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“But you will fuck me first?” Chou wondered hopefully.

“Where did you get that idea??”

“You knoowww you want to.” Chou’s eyes narrowed even further as he drawled out his response. “Don’t even try to tell me you’re not curious what it’d be like.”

“No, I’m not going to try,” Sano replied irritably, flushing slightly. “But just because I’m a normal guy and think someone’s hot other than my boyfriend doesn’t mean I automatically want to fuck them without thinking about the situation!”

“He’d never find out,” Chou cajoled. “It’d be real easy. Hell, for all he pays attention to me anymore, we could do it right here. Wouldn’t that show him.” His suggestive smile turned to a dark grin at this thought, until he added a little regretfully, “Except that we wouldn’t let him find out.”

“So this is all about ‘showing’ Saitou.” Sano was starting to get angry now, but his continued semi-daze of surprise at Chou’s behavior prevented it from becoming severe just yet.

“No! It’s about being bored out of my fuckin’ mind.”

“So go downtown and buy a whore or something.”

“I don’t want a whore, man, I want you. Come on… just once…”

To prevent the broomhead from coming any closer, Sano had raised both arms and planted them firmly, fists clenched, against Chou’s chest. Now he contemplated pushing again, but realized that if he only applied enough pressure to get Chou out of his way, he would soon find himself cornered again; whereas if he pushed hard enough to knock Chou across the room and unconscious, the result in this small office would undoubtedly be broken furniture, which would piss Saitou off whenever he showed up. It was a dilemma.

“He doesn’t know everything,” Chou went on, encouraged by Sano’s silence. “We could try it out and see: if you don’t like it — which I don’t see how that would happen — he’d never know, and if it’s good, we’d be way better together than you and him.”

“This really came out of nowhere,” Sano remarked, almost conversationally, as he continued to ponder how to escape this situation without breaking anything. He didn’t know if he even could knock Chou out with a single hit in this position.

“Nah, I just couldn’t risk my ass saying anything until I was planning to leave anyway. You really never noticed before that I like you?”

“Oh, you’re one to talk about not noticing shit…” If Sano kicked him in the groin first, he could probably knock him out with no problems immediately thereafter… but, though he wasn’t particularly happy with Chou at the moment, that still seemed a tad low.

“Whaddya mean?”

“I’m not cheating on Saitou. Not once, not ever.”

For one promising moment, Chou was nonplussed by Sano’s granite tone… but he was back on track again almost immediately. “Hey, I can see how the thought of getting on his bad side is kinda… scary as all hell… but you guys are just no good together!” His tone was understanding and wheedling at the same time. “But we would be… we’re like a matching katana and wakizashi.”

Sano just couldn’t help laughing, despite his irritation. “And who’s which?” he wanted to know.

Chou grinned and avoided answering that. “My point is that we go together really well.”

“Well, maybe we do,” Sano said, his tone sobering again. “But the big difference is that I have lines I won’t cross, where it seems like you have no fucking conscience at all.”

“You just need convincing,” Chou murmured, leaning forward for a kiss.

Since he hadn’t come up with any other solution, Sano decided it was time for a knee to the groin and a fist to the skull. However, before he or Chou could move any further in any direction, the latter was suddenly gone from the vicinity, hauled violently away and tossed bodily across the room in much the same manner Sano had been contemplating earlier, smashing a chair to bits as he crashed down. He shuddered into a comatose heap at the foot of the now-visibly-dented wall and lay still.

“Oh.” For a moment Sano stared at the red and purple mass that had only a moment before been trying to kiss him. Then, shaking himself slightly, he turned toward Saitou. “Thanks.”

Saitou had crossed his arms, one of his hands still twitching as if he would like to go pick Chou up and throw him again just to be sure. “Why didn’t you do it yourself?” he demanded.

“Well, I was trying to figure out how to not break the furniture,” Sano admitted. “If I’d known you didn’t mind…” He trailed off, realizing how it must have looked if Saitou hadn’t been in time to hear any of the conversation and had only seen the beginnings of a kiss between lover and subordinate.

But Saitou’s next statement erased Sano’s worries on that score. “Conscientious forethought and mature reasoning at the same time.” He was shaking his head as if to ask wordlessly whether wonders would ever cease.

“Yeah, and that’s all you get of both for the next year,” Sano shot back, relieved that Saitou didn’t suspect him of infidelity.

The officer glanced over at the unconscious Chou. “Still, you were cutting it a little close there.” His tone was somewhat dark: not quite accusatory, but not entirely pleased with Sano either.

Sano shrugged. “I was about to kick him in the balls.” Following the other’s gaze he added, “Probably woulda hurt less…”

Suddenly he found himself crushed against Saitou, bent half backward in the man’s arms and kissed passionately and thoroughly until he was breathless and his heart was racing. Even when it was over, the unexpectedness of it left him speechless for several moments. Finally he said, “Shit! Is that what happens when I talk about Chou’s balls?”

“Depends on the context,” Saitou smirked, looking a trifle out of breath himself. “Come on.” He gestured toward the door.

Sano mimicked the expression. “Don’t wanna be here when he wakes up?”

“That, and it’s about time to prove we’re not as bad together as he thinks.”

This remark brought a sudden, hot pressure into Sano’s chest. “I already know that,” he said quietly.

Saitou looked back at him. “So I noticed,” he replied, and in just those words and his deepened smile, it was clear how much the overheard conversation had meant to him. “But I assume you won’t object to some proof anyway,” he added, eyes narrowing.

“Hell, no,” Sano grinned, and hastened after him.



This story, which I’ve rated , was for 30_kisses theme #18 “a~an?”

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).


Black and Blue and White All Over

Dec 23, 2007 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction, Visual Art

“I come out looking for you because I’m worried something might have happened to you, and what do I find?? A bunch of grown men playing around in the snow!?!”

The payback for Sano’s winter pranks is more than he bargained for.

Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: 30_kisses | Category: Saitou and Sano one-shots | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Fluff | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Other relationship(s) briefly implied | Contains: Physical fighting between Saitou and Sano | Contains: Queer Saitou | Contains: Queer Sano | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Drama | Genre: Humor | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Omniscient | POV: Sano | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2007 | Setting: Canon | Visual art collection: Rurouni Kenshin | Visual art medium: Tablet


“Kenshin!!”

The rurouni paused and turned. As the young man, slipping occasionally but never quite falling, pelted up the hill toward where his friend stood on the more level road, Kenshin wondered, “What is wrong, Sano?”

“Look out!” Sano cried as he reached him, and, ducking behind Kenshin, this time really did fall full-length into the snow. Kenshin didn’t have time to worry about that, however, for, the very moment Sano was behind him, a snowball struck his scarred face so forcibly it knocked him backward; he tripped over Sano and fell, and his tofu bucket went flying.

“Thanks, buddy,” Sano gasped as he wriggled from beneath Kenshin and took to running again, off the road once more into the field on the other side.

“I’d apologize, Himura,” came a new voice, “if that hadn’t been the most comical thing I’ve seen all week.”

“No need for an apology, Saitou,” Kenshin replied as he sat up. “I am used to Sano using me as a shield against missiles. Of course,” he added, smiling brightly and bringing a large handful of snow with him as he stood, “that does not mean he always gets away with it.”

Saitou smirked.

Sano had ducked behind a hedge, presumably to assemble an arsenal, and it only took a single glance between the other two men to coordinate their attack: Saitou crept around the shrubbery’s far end while Kenshin approached it broadside just at the point where he sensed Sano opposite him. Then, simultaneously, Saitou came charging at Sano from the right while Kenshin cleared the hedge in a jump and landed on his left; Sano was pelted with multiple snowballs from both directions.

With a yelp, Sano tossed the one he’d been making at a bad angle, missing his two assailants entirely, and, ducking away, once again ran off.

Kenshin, obviously satisfied with this, turned with a grin and the intention of searching for his lost bucket. However, as he did so, a snowball struck him squarely on the back of the head, and when he turned again another hit his face. Saitou, who’d been more alert and therefore successfully dodged Sano’s attack, threw Kenshin a look that said, Are you just going to take that?

Kenshin bent and scooped up another handful of snow.

Sano wasn’t giving much thought to strategy, but was vaguely aware that the belt of trees toward which he was slowly being driven by the now-doubled enemy force was 1) not likely to provide much snow for further missiles but 2) likely to provide better cover than the field. It was just as he started trying to think what to do about this change in terrain when he noticed someone on the road off to his left and his face broke into a grin.

“Hey, Katsu!” he called.

The figure, which was indeed that of his good friend Katsu, stopped and looked in his direction just in time to see him take two snowballs to the chest. Sano’s subsequent cry of, “Help a guy out, will ya?” was a little breathless as a result.

Katsu stood quietly watching for several moments as Sano dodged another assault. Deciding that the hedge he’d abandoned was probably a good option as long as he didn’t let anyone take him by surprise by jumping over it again, the kenkaya tried to run back that direction and throw snowballs at both Kenshin and Saitou at the same time. One endeavor worked better than the other: although he hit his targets, his calculated movement was entirely thwarted by the return volley.

And that was when Katsu’s first snowball struck him squarely between the shoulder blades from behind.

“Katsu!!” Sano bawled in anger and surprise.

“Sorry, Sano,” said the grinning Katsu, “I like these odds better.”

“Your friend has sense,” Saitou smirked.

“My friend’s a fucking traitor!” Sano growled, now trying to watch all three of them at once.

Kenshin laughed.

“Besides, Sano, I still owe you for shoving snow down my pants last week,” Katsu explained as he took careful aim and hit Sano’s forearm so accurately that the ball Sano had been about to release from it was knocked right out of his hand.

“He shoved snow down your pants?” asked Saitou in an odd tone.

“It was a non-sexual shoving,” Katsu assured him quickly.

“I am not sure in what context shoving snow down someone’s pants could be considered sexual,” remarked Kenshin.

“Well, with Sano, you never know,” was Katsu’s mock-sober response.

They all got back to business. The brief exchange, though, had given Sano an opportunity to take a better stance against them and hastily manufacture enough snowballs that he was able to hold his own for a few minutes. He felt rather proud of himself, actually; he knew he excelled at facing off against multiple enemies, but he wouldn’t have thought he could last this long at snowballs against both Saitou and Kenshin — and Katsu was proving uncannily good at this, too.

“What’s this??” A new voice from the road. “Nobody told me it was Everybody Throw Snowballs At Tori-Atama Day!”

“Shit,” Sano muttered.

As Chou came sliding down the slope to join the others, Sano had another moment of relative freedom in which to replenish his collection of weapons somewhat desperately.

“You’re supposed to be at the station,” Saitou was admonishing.

“I think you are too,” Chou grinned. “But I need to get even with this bastard for shovin’ snow down my pants the other day.”

“Hmm…” Thoughtfully Kenshin cocked his head to one side. “Whose pants has Sano not shoved snow down recently?”

“His own, presumably,” Saitou replied.

“We should totally fix that,” Chou suggested.

Sano did not like the sound of this. Gathering up his snowballs, he turned and fled into the trees.

They followed him — Kenshin the most quickly, of course, but Sano, expecting that, slowed him up with a pointed missile. Then his heart lightened as he cleared the trees and came upon exactly what he needed.

A little ridge of rock curved toward the forest belt, a considerable snowdrift piled between its protective arms. If his enemies kept to the cover of the trees, they would have little ammunition; if they advanced to where the snow began again, they would be forced into the narrow space between the rocks, and he would have an easy shot. And he had plenty of snow within reach; he didn’t even have to bend down for it. He grinned in triumph and turned to face them.

They must have seen immediately the advantageous circumstances in which he’d placed himself, for after a few missiles they’d probably brought with them from the field, everything went still and silent. Sano watched carefully for their movements behind the trees they were using for concealment, a snowball in each hand and a defiant smile on his face.

Finally, after a tense minute or so of this stalemate, Saitou stepped out into plain view.

Sano threw immediately; Saitou dodged one and took the other, and kept walking forward. Sano reached back for more snow, at which the officer raised his empty hands and Sano paused. He would accept their surrender graciously.

“You’re freezing,” Saitou murmured as he came within arm’s length of the younger man and observed his heavy shivering.

“And whose fault is that?” Sano wondered.

“Entirely your own,” replied Saitou with a smirk. “We should probably stop…” He bent and kissed Sano soundly, working the coldness from his lips with a massaging motion.

As he drew back, Sano’s shivering increased, but his eyes were sparkling. Then his expression changed completely as Saitou added softly, “…but not yet,” and sprang abruptly backward, bending for a handful of snow.

“What the fuck was–” Sano began, but was cut off as snowballs came flying at him from all directions. He dashed for cover, but found the very ridge he’d been using for that purpose now held against him. Two of his enemies must have scrambled up it from either side while he’d been too distracted to notice and thwart them.

“Your diversion techniques are rather unusual, officer-san,” Katsu remarked from high on Sano’s left.

“What?!” Sano demanded as he attempted to dodge in multiple directions at once and failed miserably.

“Yeah, I gotta try that one one of these days,” Chou laughed from high on Sano’s right.

“No, you don’t!” Sano growled as he went to scoop up more snow to retaliate, only to have an unfairly accurate projectile knock his hand away.

“Sano, you really should know better than to lower your guard in the middle of a battle,” Kenshin’s voice came from not far behind Sano to his left, “no matter who it is kissing you.”

“‘Battle?'” Sano swatted a snowball out of the air but took another to each side of his head.

“I keep telling him that,” Saitou remarked from Sano’s right, “but he really is too thick-skulled.”

“You’ve never said a word about kissing in the middle of a battle!!” Again Sano attempted to fight back, but started to recognize the futility of his efforts. Soon there was nothing to do but fall to his knees and try to guard his face and head with upraised arms.

“Well, Sano, do you give up?” Kenshin wondered cheerfully.

“Never!” Sano roared.

“Come on, Sano, my hands are getting really cold,” Katsu prodded, nearly as cheerful as Kenshin.

“Not mine,” Chou put in, more cheerfully than both of them. “I could do this all day.”

“You’re wearing leather gloves,” Katsu pointed out.

Despite his defiance, Sano was weakening. What’s more, he was beginning to be able to distinguish which snowballs were whose, and that was pretty pathetic: Saitou’s hit hardest, Kenshin’s came fastest, Katsu’s were the most accurate, and Chou’s were just sloppy. Not that it mattered much; four on one would suck in any case. He was getting to the point where he was almost ready to start thinking about maybe giving in when he was unexpectedly saved.

“What is going on here?”

The tone was enough to stop them all in their tracks, frozen more thoroughly than the snow could render them.

“Kenshin, I sent you out after tofu an hour ago!”

Sano, peering warily through his arms, saw Kaoru standing back beyond Kenshin and Saitou in the trees, brandishing the bucket Kenshin had dropped earlier and glowering like death incarnate. “I come out looking for you because I’m worried something might have happened to you, and what do I find?? A bunch of grown men playing around in the snow!?!”

“And if you were all gonna beat up on Sano,” grumbled Yahiko from her side, “you could at least have invited me.”

After smacking Yahiko briefly, Kaoru held out the tofu bucket and growled, “Kenshin…”

“Yes, yes, Kaoru-dono.” Kenshin dropped the snowball he’d been about to throw and began self-consciously brushing and shaking snow from his clothes even as he went to join his dojomates.

“I swear, you’re as easily distracted as Sano is!” Kaoru ranted as she turned sharply and walked away with a tight, hauling grip on Kenshin’s sleeve. Sano noticed Yahiko casting those that remained in combative positions a somewhat wistful glance as he followed.

Watching with grins and rolling eyes, Katsu and Chou began making their way off the high ground they’d so unfairly captured — one careful, the other reckless. “I’ve entirely forgotten what I was on my way to do,” Katsu said.

Chou glanced over at him. “You were on your way to have dinner with me?” he suggested hopefully.

“Oh, was I?” wondered Katsu with a laugh. “I guess I’m late, then.”

“Oh, I have a feelin’ you’ll get there the same time I do,” Chou grinned, “so it’s probably all right.”

“Better get going, then.” Katsu returned the expression, then glanced at Sano. “Sano, it appears I’ve got a date, so we’ll have to finish this another time.”

Sano, who had not yet removed his arms from over his face, grumbled from behind them, “You’re wasting your time with that guy, but all right!”

Soon, therefore, the only people left were the two with whom the entire drama had originated, and the scene had become very quiet. Seeing both of Saitou’s hands engaged in lighting a cigarette, Sano deemed it safe to emerge.

“How the hell did that start, anyway?” he wondered, standing at last.

Saitou looked over at him with a raised brow. “By you stuffing snow down my pants?” he suggested.

“Oh, yeah,” Sano grinned. “Well, I guess that was worth it.”

“You’re going to be black and blue,” smirked Saitou.

“No shit, man.” Grimacing, Sano glanced over the various red spots that had already developed on his raw, aching skin. “I swear Katsu’s had little eyes and brains of their own.”

“He does seem to be quite a good shot,” Saitou agreed. “But I meant you’re going to be black and blue once I’m finished with you. Come on; let’s go take a bath.”

Sano’s grin widened as he bounced over to Saitou’s side and took his arm. “All right!”

With narrowed eyes and a puff of smoke that seemed double in the frosty air, “And we’ll make sure it was ‘worth it,'” Saitou added.


I’ve rated this story .

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).


Inappropriate Methods

Aug 16, 2007 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Rurouni Kenshin Fanfiction

“He can question me however he wants.”

Certain interactions between Saitou and Sano, taken slightly out of context, may get Saitou in trouble at work.

Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: 30_kisses | Category: Saitou and Sano one-shots | Contains: Consent issues | Contains: Importunate/insensitive Sano | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Pre-relationship story for main couple(s) | Contains: Queer Saitou | Contains: Queer Sano | Contains: Sano pursues Saitou | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Genre: Drama | Length: 2k-3k words | Pairing - Primary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Saitou | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2007 | Setting: Canon

The first thing that caught Saitou’s eye as he entered his office was Chou’s expression. Such a broad smile on the face of someone that lived to be entertained never signified the day would go well. “What are you grinning about?”

“Nothing,” Chou replied, blatantly lying. “Chief wants to see you.”

“Why?” Saitou asked.

Chou shrugged. “Maybe he wants an update on the other night?”

Saitou restrained his roll of eyes, not wishing to give Chou any reason to widen his grin, and headed for the chief’s office.

They were unmistakably dead. This was highly irritating.

There were three of them, and all had been alive only a few minutes ago. From the way they’d fallen, he guessed two of them had killed each other but that the last had been stabbed by some fourth party now absent. This was, as he had already noted, highly irritating.

“First, let me commend you on the progress you’ve made on this case,” was the chief’s first comment, his air that of disclaimer. “Before you took it over, Kanbu-kun couldn’t figure out whether he was looking for five murderers, three murderers and two hostages, or three thieves and two hostages.” The chief sighed. “Or five thieves. Or some combination of those options. He was wasting resources going every which-way, but you cut straight to the heart of things as usual.”

Saitou nodded acceptance of the compliment, unsure what was coming. The chief appeared unusually grim and worried, and, Saitou thought, perhaps a little nervous. It was an odd combination of emotional nuance.

Of course he’d intended to kill them anyway, but not until after his questions had been answered. He didn’t think any of these corpses were the hostages, but he couldn’t know for sure now, could he?

As he stood scowling down at them, he became aware that somebody else — somebody not dead — was present. Somebody watching the scene from the shadows under the bridge. Somebody…

He growled when he realized who it was, and stalked into the blackness to confront him.

“Since I’ve said this much, you must understand I’m not trying to undervalue your work. Your methods are unusual, but you always get results. However.” The chief crossed his arms and lowered his brows. “There are some methods I would have thought beneath you.”

Saitou frowned. “What are you referring to?”

“I never thought I’d be saying this to you.” The chief took a deep breath. “Sexual abuse is never an appropriate way to get answers out of witnesses.”

Saitou blinked.

“Evening,” was Sagara’s greeting. “Nice night, ain’t it?”

Gripped with a sudden premonition that this would not go well, “What happened here?” Saitou demanded.

“Oh, it was funny,” Sagara grinned. “Great small-gang drama. I’da stepped in, but they were doing a pretty good job killing each other without my help.”

Such a flippant reply was a little unexpected even from Sagara, and Saitou’s foreboding increased. “Tell me exactly what happened,” he commanded; “start from the beginning.”

What little light there was glinted off Sagara’s teeth as his grin widened. “What’s it worth to you?”

Of all the things he might have expected to hear in this room, that was not on the list — yet it took him only a moment to realize exactly what the statement pertained to and how the news must have reached Uramura’s ears. A plan of action was slower in coming than comprehension, however. And completely taken aback was not something Saitou frequently found himself.

The chief took advantage of the stunned moment to remark, “I’m not going to speculate on why this is such a surprise to you. Just let me remind you that helping some of the innocent at the expense of others entirely undermines our purpose.”

Saitou had absolutely no patience for further delay in this case. He gripped the edges of Sagara’s gi and pulled him roughly closer. “I’ll consider not killing you.”

Sagara raised his hands to grip Saitou’s tense arms — not to disengage them, merely to hold them — and replied with no concern, “You can’t kill me if you wanna know what happened here.”

“Try me,” Saitou grated back. Sagara just continued to grin. Finally, as the sense of wasting time continued almost painfully to heighten, Saitou demanded in the same tone, “What do you want?”

“Kiss me,” Sagara replied promptly.

“Don’t lecture me,” Saitou snapped, buying time while he considered how to word his explanation for the least potential loss of face. “You don’t know the whole story.”

“And that’s what I’ve brought you here to explain.” The chief crossed his arms again. He still didn’t seem entirely comfortable, and no wonder. Not once in his acquaintance with Saitou had he been forced to carry out this sort of conversation with him, and doubtless had never expected to.

Not yet entirely sure what he could say, Saitou opened his mouth to reply.

Slamming Sagara abruptly against the wall and closing in angrily he snarled, “How many times do I have to tell you–“

He broke off when he realized his violent movement had put his body a good deal closer to Sagara’s than he would have if he’d been paying attention. Now the shameless young man was grinding against him provocatively and completely ignoring his words. Saitou shook him. “Ahou, I have no time for this.”

“You never have time,” Sagara purred. “You’d be less grouchy if you cut loose now and then.”

“This isn’t about me. There are two men–“

“Then you better kiss me quick,” interrupted Sagara.

“Sir?” The door opened and someone put his head in. “I’m sorry to intrude, but you requested–”

“Yes,” the chief broke in. “You found him?”

Saitou restrained himself from repeating incredulously, ‘Him?’ Had they tracked Sanosuke down as a witness against him? And if so, what kind of nonsense testimony was the idiot likely to provide? Even the absolute truth would — Saitou was not afraid to admit it — be embarrassing; god knew how much worse Sagara was likely to make things sound.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, bring him in.”

And, indeed, here was Sagara, escorted by a couple of low-ranking officers who then, at the chief’s word, took up places by the door as if to guard the room. Sagara appeared at first somewhat defiant, but when he saw Saitou this expression vanished, replaced by sudden understanding that was quickly stifled. “So, what’s going on?” he asked in a tone that was nothing more than casually curious.

Saitou’s fury was cooling; he had the feeling he’d lost his chance for further pursuit. Which didn’t make Sagara’s information less desirable (provided he wasn’t lying about having witnessed the fight), but did make his absurd behavior more worthy of retribution. Saitou punched him in the chest.

With a grunt Sagara remarked in a tone that was a good deal less sultry than his previous, “I shoulda known you’d like it rough.”

Saitou knew Sagara would cease with the seduction attempts (which were always a good deal closer to successful than the officer would like to admit) once he was angry enough, but not only would that process take too long, an angry Sagara probably wouldn’t be willing to tell him anything. Nothing useful, anyway.

“This officer questioned you the other evening, correct?” The chief gestured at Saitou.

Sagara nodded somewhat blankly.

“Can you describe that encounter?”

Although Sagara’s face was serious, Saitou didn’t like the look in the young man’s eyes when they touched briefly on his. The deep breath he took before beginning to speak gave him somewhat the appearance of nervousness, but Saitou believed rather that he was merely trying to think fast. “Well…” he started slowly. “He wanted me to tell him what I saw those gang guys and their prisoners doing, since they’d mostly killed each other…” He hesitated as everyone looked at him expectantly.

“Fine,” Saitou snapped, and kissed him. Just to make absolutely certain Sagara would be satisfied enough not to hold out on him further (or perhaps just too dazed), he dug his tongue into the idiot’s mouth and his hand into the idiot’s pants. Sagara groaned into the kiss and squirmed, and Saitou pushed firmly aside the inconvenient wish that there weren’t a glove between his hand and the hot flesh.

When he broke away all at once, he was pleased to note that the surprised brightness in Sagara’s eyes bore no trace of further deviousness.

“I knew it,” the boy whispered.

Not caring what Sagara thought he’d known, Saitou demanded, “What happened here?”

After a moment the chief turned to Saitou. “If you would step out for a few minutes…” He gestured to the door leading to a small adjoining briefing room — not to the door into the station proper, which implied that this affair, however informally it was being conducted, was a disciplinary issue. Saitou wasn’t even sure how to react.

“He doesn’t need to leave,” Sagara said unexpectedly, drawing all eyes once more. His expression was now one of slight confusion, but, again, when his gaze met Saitou’s, there was a spark of amusement in it. Saitou would never had thought him such a skillful actor. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think maybe you guys have the wrong idea…”

“Were Fujita-kun’s methods in questioning you not inappropriate, then?” The chief’s tone was grave.

“Oh, they were definitely inappropriate,” Sagara chuckled, “but…” Then like clockwork the confusion was gone from his expression, replaced by skepticism. “Don’t tell me you guys don’t know…”

At this Saitou knew what was coming. He might have interrupted to prevent it, since Sagara had paused for effect, but he feared that what the roosterhead had in mind was the least of the possible evils; he was busy bracing himself for it.

“Know what?” The police chief’s tone was somewhat impatient and perhaps a little suspicious. It could be he also anticipated Sagara’s statement and began to sense the absurdity of the situation.

“Fujita and me are lovers,” Sagara announced with offhand grandeur.

With a deep breath Sanosuke began. “They were on their way from a job, far as I could tell, and they started arguing. It seemed like they were just continuing some argument they’d had before, and they kept getting louder and louder, and that was what made me really start paying attention. When I realized they must be the guys you and houki been after for the last fifty years, I was about to jump in and take ’em out…”

Saitou shifted in irritation and some discomfort. He still didn’t know whether these thieves had also been the murderers, and it was so typical… what would he have done if, when he’d come upon the scene, Sagara’s body had been among those he’d found?

“But then one of ’em just suddenly attacks the others and boom, one’s down. It was about then I realized two of the guys had their hands tied behind their backs. It all went pretty quick from there: another guy went down, and somehow one of the tied-up guys got loose and stabbed the last of the other three. Then he cut the ropes on the other guy and they ran off. It all took about three minutes.”

The officers by the door twitched, and Saitou, in a moment of prescience, saw very clearly how quickly this gossip was going to spread through the entire precinct. Then there was another moment of silence.

Finally the chief turned to Saitou and asked in a measured, inscrutable tone, “Is this true?”

Very stiffly, Saitou nodded — and did not miss Sagara’s expression of triumph in so doing.

“He hates letting aaaaanyone know about his private life,” the young man continued, “but, yeah, me and old Gory here’ve been going at it almost since I was too young for that kinda thing.” Lowering his voice slightly, suggestively, he added, “He can question me however he wants.”

Another twitch from the men at the door; another long moment of silence.

“Very well, that’s all we’ll need from you, then.” And at the chief’s gesture, the other officers escorted Sagara out.

Saitou was silent and still for a few moments. This tale, though not delivered with the conciseness and level of detail he would have preferred, was undeniably useful. Whether it was worth having given the lovesick idiot undeniable encouragement he did not know, but it did answer most of his questions.

“Ran off where?” he asked.

“Hopefully to a doctor,” Sagara replied. “They weren’t looking too good.”

Saitou shook him slightly, just for good measure. “Which direction?”

Sagara tilted his head. “That way. Up the bank. I didn’t hear ’em cross the bridge.”

With a nod, Saitou released him.

“I gotta find something bigger to witness next time,” Sagara murmured in evident satisfaction.

Saitou scowled at him.

He fully expected a reprimand from the chief for not explaining himself at first, but, as it turned out, Uramura was just as intrigued as his subordinates by the suggestion that Fujita-kun was not, in fact, an inhuman entity of chiseled stone that lay only with his sword and loved only justice. So, rather than any sort of remonstrance, Saitou only had to suffer a few leading remarks before he was allowed to go about his business.

Not exactly to his surprise, the beehive-like noise of the station’s main room quieted almost to nothing when he appeared, and Chou met him with a smirk even wider than before. “Get back to work,” was all Saitou was willing to say in response to the latter’s grinning questions. Then he left the building. The noise had redoubled before he was entirely out the door.

As he had expected, Sagara joined him nearly the moment he was off the police station grounds. His expression was similar to Chou’s, but somehow a trifle less maddening.

“One of these days I really am going to kill you,” was Saitou’s greeting.

“And here I thought you’d be thanking me,” Sano grinned.

“For what? What exactly did that accomplish?”

“Besides getting you out of trouble?”

“May I remind you that the ‘trouble’ was your fault in the first place?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who was getting all fancy-fingers in my pants.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.”

“I won’t if you won’t.”

Saitou snorted.

“But, no, what it really accomplished,” Sano explained in self-satisfaction, “was to get rid of one of the million stupid things that keep you from getting with me. Now you don’t have to worry about people finding out and what they’ll think and all that.”

“Putting it that way might make it sound like you’d planned the whole thing… if that hadn’t been the worst ‘solution’ to that ‘problem’ anyone could possibly come up with.”

“Maybe I did plan it all.” Sano attempted, and failed, to look mysterious.

Saitou rolled his eyes slightly, a more hopeless than disdainful gesture at this point. How had he managed to catch the attention of history’s stubbornest idiot? And how was it that he never quite managed to give him the decisive negative he needed to hear?

“So now I’ve just got, what, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine more bullshit reasons to deal with, and then you’ll be mine.”

“Ahou.” It was, for some reason, all he could think to say. But as he turned back toward the station, readier now to face the rest of his day, he wasn’t scowling quite as much as when he’d left it.

“Sir?” It was a hesitant call — almost tremulous — from behind him. Saitou had nearly forgotten about his subordinate’s presence.

“This way,” the wolf replied as he stepped back out from under the bridge and gestured up the slope. And though the younger officer tried his best to hide it, Saitou easily marked his searching glance into the shadows where Sagara stood. How much had he seen? It was anybody’s guess, as was what he would make of it. It must have seemed excessively odd, if he hadn’t been able to catch the accompanying conversation.

Well, let him wonder. No harm could come of that.


This story was for 30_kisses theme #21 “Violence; Pillage/Plunder; Extortion.”

Can you imagine having to formally reprimand someone that consistently adheres only to his own moral code and, you have a sneaking suspicion, only nominally recognizes your authority? Also I love that Saitou is so blatantly teetering on the edge of giving in but is still resisting. And “Old Gory” may be the most hilarious nickname for Saitou (or anyone) I have ever come up with. Sano is a jerk here, though.

I’ve rated this story .

This story is included in the Saitou & Sano Collection ebook (.zip file contains .pdf, .mobi, and .epub formats).